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Chapter Text

Percy never thought he'd say this, but he felt a smidgeon of sympathy for a Titan. If hindsight was 20-20, then there was no way that Epimetheus, with his shoddy vision, ever walked anywhere without crashing into innumerable walls.

In that context, Percy could be forgiven for overlooking the clues.

His first inkling that something was strange should have been the odd manner in which Apollo looked at him the first time they met.

There was something almost hungry about his gaze – hungry yet wary, like a child who’d once gorged on a beloved candy to the point of vomiting, subsequently making his teenage self uncertain whether trying it again would bring pain or pleasure.

“Perseus Jackson,” the god almost savoured the words. “Or do you prefer Percy?”

Standing in a clearing surrounded by Thalia, Grover, Nico, Artemis, and all the hunters sworn to the goddess, Percy answered respectfully, “Percy, sir.”

It was weird to address a teenager as sir, but he had no doubts that being turned into an insect and crushed beneath a god’s foot would be stranger.

***

The next clue had been even more blatant, but Percy was too busy contemplating all the terrible things that could be happening to Annabeth to pay attention.

Seated in a sports car being transported by a train going a staggering two hundred miles an hour, Percy considered mulling over the scant few pearls of wisdom dropped from Apollo’s lips of more significance than pondering the god’s reluctance to help any further.

Had he known his presence was overwhelmed by his own reticence, Apollo would have probably been extremely displeased. As it stood, making plans to rescue Annabeth with the limited information available to him was more important to Percy than uselessly wondering why the god was still sticking around.

However, when the stare burning into the side of his face grew too much to bear, Percy finally asked, “Is there something on my face?”

The god blinked back to awareness. “Well, you look like you haven't bathed in a week, but otherwise, no.”

Someone whose disguise of choice was a homeless man with missing teeth really shouldn't be casting aspersions here, Percy thought uncharitably.

Nonetheless, there was a modicum of grudging respect in his voice when he inquired further, “Then?”

Apollo shrugged. “You just … remind me of someone.”

“A hero who achieved his goals, I hope.”

Apollo's lips curled into a wry little uptick when he said, “Perhaps. He certainly achieved his stated objective. Whether he still wanted it … who knows?”

Percy narrowed his eyes. “And why do I remind you of him?”

“You should sleep,” Apollo instructed instead.

And within seconds, Percy found himself doing just that.

***

All that to say – the clues had been as obvious as a trail of breadcrumbs. Percy just hadn't noticed that the birds fluttering around him had been after the food, and not simply luxuriating in his presence. Not even noticed that the morsels on the ground hadn’t been accidentally dropped but were the sign of a deliberate construction.

He could see it now though.

Watching Daedalus show Percy, not Icarus, the marvellous mechanical wings he'd devised to escape the Labyrinth was the arrow speeding towards his face.

Being stuck here, not in a dream but in someone else's body, was the wall that he'd crashed into and brought down on himself.

Percy had landed in the past – and he had no one but himself to blame.

***

Like most things wrong with his life, the blame for this debacle could also be laid solidly at the feet of Kronos.

In a clearing at Camp Half Blood, Nico di Angelo told him plaintively, “Two years ago, my sister gave her life to protect you. I want you to honour that. Do whatever it takes to stay alive and defeat Kronos.”

Nico might have had a point, but the nightmare-inducing plan to dip Percy into the waters of the Styx until he hardened into a diamond didn’t fill him with confidence.

“It won’t matter if I’m invulnerable,” he told the boy miserably. “Kronos can just slow down time and shish-kebab me until he finds my weak spot.”

“So, you’re giving up?” Nico demanded.

“Of course, not!” Percy protested. “But rushing into this isn’t the answer.”

The angry glint came back into Nico’s eyes. “There have to be others who have power over time,” he tried to convince Percy.

“Like what, the Doctor?” Percy scoffed.

Nico stared at him in confusion. “Doctor who?” he asked hesitantly.

Percy dropped his head down, unable to even take advantage of the line.

But Nico was right regarding certain aspects. Kronos couldn’t be the only person in the entire Universe with powers related to time. If nothing else, shouldn’t Demeter have something similar since she was also an agricultural deity?

If any of the cabin four members possessed any talent at speeding up anything but the growth of a plant, however, they had never disclosed it.

“Percy,” Nico insisted.

Percy thought furiously. Kronos – which sounded an awful lot like Chronos. Who used to be a separate person, at least until his worship was conflated with Kronos’s and the god proceeded to possibly fade.

“Chronology,” Percy blurted out.

“Don’t change the subject,” Nico began only to be interrupted by Percy.

“I need to talk to Chiron,” he announced before rushing off.

Chiron’s uncomfortable expression confirmed that Percy was on the right track.

“Percy,” the centaur cleared his throat before restarting. “A lot of the old gods have faded over the years, as you have guessed.”

He clomped around the cluttered study, tail flicking in agitation. “What fades might end up recuperating in Tartarus. But sometimes gods don’t fade.”

“Like the Olympians, or Pan, who lingered even after he wished to leave. Yes, I know,” Percy agreed.

Chiron agreed instantly, somehow relieved at the example. “Exactly. Pan gave some of his powers to all of you before fading. Similarly, it is entirely possible that if he faded, Chronos might have given his powers to someone beforehand.”

“Like Kronos?” Percy asked, getting irritated at the centaur’s prevarications. “Except he was definitely in Tartarus by that point, so why would any self-respecting god share even the barest smidgeon of power with him?”

“Percy,” Chiron pleaded. “I understand your worry, but there are dangers in this line of questioning that you do not understand.”

“Then explain to me,” Percy exclaimed.

Chiron closed his eyes, suddenly appearing all three thousand of his years. “Gods aren’t unchanging relics of the past,” he murmured. “They change, adapt … absorb. What was once Chronos might not be him any longer.”

Broaching the topic seemed to be like hitting the tip of an iceberg. The camp activities director sagged. “Don’t pursue this any further,” he begged.

“I’m about to fight Kronos, Chiron,” Percy told him, exhausted. “I have a plan,” a plan that would not possibly hit its final hurdle just when he needed success the most, “but that plan is useless if Kronos can just freeze the world.”

“He won’t have the powers to do that yet,” Chiron reassured. “While he is still within Luke’s body, his powers are constricted by what the body can bear.”

And a body with the Curse of Achilles could bear a lot.

Percy’s intractability in the face of this resistance had Chiron desperately dissuading him, “Even if Chronos were to still be there, no one knows where he is. It took two thousand years to find Pan. We don’t have time to search for another god.”

Percy nodded, outwardly complaisant, but inwardly holding on to the nugget of information the centaur had dropped. How fortuitous that the Underworld just so happened to have an opening to Tartarus.

Who was he kidding?

That was the worst possible thing in the world. Even though he was determined to at least give it a try, the constant lack of impediments was really getting him down.

Did the Universe want him in Tartarus?

***

Nico looked around anxiously. “Percy, we shouldn’t be here.”

Percy pretended his limbs weren’t shaking as they traversed the gloomy, poplar infested depths of the Underworld.

“You don’t have to come with,” he responded. “Didn’t you say you had something to do?”

“Yes,” Nico’s voice shook minutely but he determinedly followed after Percy. “But you want to go to the Pit. I’m not letting you do that alone.”

Percy appreciated that. Especially since the closer they got to the Pit, the more the cold, spindly arms of the primordial beckoned him forward.

The rocky terrain gave way to obsidian gravel and soon, the walls of the cavern started pressing down on them. Before long, Percy was back in the side tunnel that led to Tartarus.

He stopped, held stationary in the grips of reluctance. Did he really want to do this?

But Beckendorf was wating in Elysium. He was never going to return to Camp, to his siblings, and to Silena. Percy had been too weak and too slow to save him – and now the demigod was stuck waiting in Elysium for someone else.

Percy took a deep breath and trudged deeper into the tunnel until the chasm that had nearly swallowed Grover came into view.

“You’re not planning on going in, are you?” Nico yelped.

Percy graced the younger boy with only a modicum of his attention. The rest was firmly engrossed in contemplating the foolishness of his actions. Even though Kronos was out there wearing Luke like an ill-fitting suit of clothes, Percy could have sworn the Titan’s evil lingered here.

Or maybe the evil was Tartarus itself and Kronos had merely sucked it in.

“We’re close enough,” Percy determined once they were in front of a big rock. At least, if some creature started employing suction in an attempt to gather a tasty morsel, they’d have the protection of a giant, crumbly stone.   

“We should turn back,” Nico repeated, starting to sound like a broken record.

“Chronos!” Percy called loudly, grimly resolved to see this through. “Lord of time, with the powers to manipulate past, present, and future. Please, accept my offering and hear me out.”

He took out the Minotaur horn he’d obtained when he was just twelve – spoils from the first monster he’d killed due to Kronos’s machinations. Then he tossed it into the pit.

The pit seemed to hold its breath before a cold wind blew right at Percy. It brought with it the smell of rot, of decay, but also of spring and the first shoots breaking through the ground. Underlying it was the icy bite of the Poles, threatening to freeze him where he stood.

There was a whisper, a few incomprehensible words spoken in an ancient tongue Percy had no hopes of deciphering.

The silence that fell over them afterwards had something anticipatory to it.

“Lord Chronos,” Percy’s voice grew more confident the longer he talked. “We are currently in a fight to determine the very fate of the Western world. Kronos is willing to destroy everything for revenge. The gods are busy fighting Typhon, and the only ones able to fight Kronos and his army are demigods. But he can slow time to such an extent that nothing we do has a hope of touching him.”

Even being on the ocean hadn’t been enough – it was only once he was dowsed in saltwater that he had been able to break the thrall. Only, he couldn’t count on seawater when chances were that his last stand would take place 600 floors above land on Olympus itself.

“Please,” Percy entreated. “If you could only stop him from doing that? Or speed time up when he slows it down?”

Another whisper, this time directly in his mind. It was still in a language Percy didn’t know, but he somehow understood the gist.

Why?

Why what?

“Because I don’t want people to die,” Percy said hesitantly.

Or did Chronos (hopefully, he didn’t know what he would do if he had accidentally contacted one of the actual high-level prisoners of Tartarus) mean why should the god help?

“I will also speak to my father about helping you,” Percy promised recklessly. “And the demigods at camp – they’ll all burn offerings in your name every night.”

The unknown, intangible presence sighed right in Percy’s ear. A weight draped over his shoulders, threatening to buckle the demigod’s knees and send him crashing to the floor.

Percy got the implication and, unwillingly, kneeled down. This insistence on grovelling that all immortals demanded had gotten old before the very first time. But it wasn’t worth arguing about.

At this sign of subservience, however reluctant, the wind around them grew into a blizzard.

Dimly, Percy heard Nico scream something. It was hard to hear him though – the only sound in Percy’s ears was the arcane whispering slowly rising in intensity.

Then, in a voice remarkably like Kronos’s, full of the weight of years, the creature in Tartarus said, “This fascination with death will be your undoing.”

The force behind the ancient being’s vaguely mocking tones rattled Percy to his bones.

“Why labour ceaselessly to prevent an outcome you have yet to experience? You wish to prevent the deaths of others? Why don’t you give it a try first?”

Percy screamed, the sharp blades of the blizzard slicing into him. It felt like something was peeling back his skin, carving away his muscles, and breaking apart his bones. Then something reached a place deep inside him that nothing had ever touched.

Percy’s very being shuddered, choked.

No!

Even with a mind wracked into insensibility by pain, Percy knew this was wrong. A wave of mingled horror, revulsion, and vulnerability washed over him.

If Percy was a frog, then he was one pinned to a dissection table, having his layers peeled apart to reveal his insides.

The being laughed in his mind, flaying Percy’s very soul open.

“Why don’t you try getting over death, little godling?” Chronos crooned. “That might help you fulfil your prophecy.”

The last thing Percy heard before blacking out was Nico screaming his name.   

Chapter Text

Percy woke up to someone shaking him lightly.

“Wake up, son,” a vaguely familiar voice instructed him gently.

“Father?” Percy mumbled, still muddled from pain and his sudden descent into unconsciousness.

Had Poseidon sensed that Percy was in trouble and come to rescue him, just as he’d helped Percy recuperate from the explosion aboard the Princess Andromeda?

“Yes, Icarus. Wake up. This might be the day,” the old voice urged.

Icarus?

Reluctant, but unable to postpone it any further, Percy opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was a purplish sky with faded stars. The faintest of red glows was barely visible at the edges, signifying the presence of the rising Sun.

The second thing was the pair of keen grey eyes looking at him with barely hidden concern. They rested within a wrinkled face belonging to an old, withered man.

Percy swallowed. “Father?” he ventured tentatively.

The old man laboriously climbed to his feet. “Up with you, Icarus. You need to stoke the fire.”

Percy struggled up from his position on the blanket-padded ground, taking in his surroundings.

The shadows cast by the seven-foot-tall walls imprisoning them made the workshop dark as night. The dimly glowing embers in the forge at a corner of the room only heightened the mystery. The outlines of tables, machines, and other miscellaneous objects of ambiguous purpose sent disquiet through Percy.

He’d seen this place before.

“We’re planning to fly out today?” he confirmed, desperately wishing for a no. He’d even settle for a confused grimace.

Instead, Daedalus confirmed, “The second wing is almost finished.”

Percy might have been instructed to get the forge going, but his next job was cleaning a metal contraption that Daedalus had pre-crafted. Which was for the best – he had been dazed enough that his limbs moved on their own to start the forge, but now that he was more awake, activating the muscle memory was much harder.

Percy took a shaky breath at getting one glimpse of the tanned, muscular arms with unfamiliar scars, and snapped his eyes somewhere, anywhere, else.

He focused instead on pouring what smelled like the ancient version of disinfectant on a rag and scrubbing the palm-sized object. Having his hands encased in leather gloves helped – he didn't have to look at the callouses that didn't belong on his hands, didn't have to seek the nicks and bumps that should have been there, didn't have to see fingers that were the wrong size to be his.

Any clumsiness could be excused by the gloves, it had nothing to do with this not being his own body.

Then the acrid scent of the liquid registered – sending him recoiling. It smelled like someone had combined vinegar and bitter herbs and forgotten to mask the odour with fragrance.

But hey, Percy consoled himself once he was done inhaling the noxious fumes. At least it wasn't ammonia. Ancient methods of obtaining that cleaning product often amounted to just peeing on the floor and washing the house with it. Or well, something like that. He heard the word urine and stopped listening in disgust before Annabeth could go into any details.

As if on cue, his bladder made its presence known.

The next few minutes were … less embarrassing than he would have expected ancient toilet practices to be. He attributed it to the genius of Daedalus.

But having to carry out these ablutions really cemented in place the fact that this wasn’t any ordinary dream. What had Chronos said?

Why don’t you give death a try?

Did Chronos want him to die as Icarus before the god would extend his help? But why the glee at this predicament then?

Percy scowled as his stomach grumbled, adding another layer of reality to the dream.

No, fact of the matter was, Chronos had meant this as a punishment. Percy had dared to try to save people, and so he’d be forced to experience death. It seemed just the sort of thing a malicious immortal would do.

However tangible the heat and claustrophobia of being stuck back inside the Labyrinth though, at least Percy knew this wasn’t his physical reality. He might be stuck in the body of Icarus, but when he plummeted into the sea, it wouldn’t be Percy dying.

Scant comfort, but all he had to cling to.

Percy steeled himself and tried to carry on as if he weren’t heading to the gallows. By Daedalus’ worried looks though, it was clear he wasn’t very successful. But if this were all in his mind, what need did he have to convince the inventor?

Watching the currently still mortal man was already bringing up all sorts of emotions in him – most of them negative.

“Help me hide these,” Daedalus suddenly instructed at some unseen cue.

Percy startled at suddenly being addressed, but obligingly helped the inventor hide the unfinished pair of wings behind a table. They piled numerous other golden items strategically around and on it – and not a second too soon.

Just as Percy returned to the bellows and Daedalus took up tongs and a chainmail shirt as if he’d been working on it all along, the doors clanged open.

The pair of guards that showed up looked at them suspiciously, but placed two plates of bread, cheese, and fruits on the floor before withdrawing.

Percy instantly abandoned the forge and grabbed the food.

“Let’s eat first,” he said with forced cheer before digging in.

The rest of the day proceeded as it had in his dream, complete with Percy praising the inventor and reciting, “You made them, Father. You should get the honour of wearing them

first,” when Daedalus tried to put the wings on Percy.

It was only once they were soaring into the sky upon an updraft from the heated air collected from the forge that Percy felt the first stirrings of uneasiness.

He wasn’t made for flying. Percy was a son of Poseidon, which meant the only times he was allowed in the air were:

1. When he was carrying something too important for Zeus to blow up.
2. When he was being transported by Apollo in his sun chariot
3. When he was being carried atop another creature capable of flight.

This was none of the above. And unlike the last time he had donned the wings of Daedalus, he could practically feel the rudimentary nature of this contraption.

Percy whimpered, barely managing to keep his arms outstretched enough to not make fatal contact with the ground.

Forget the loop-de-loops Icarus had performed. Percy was going to fly in a straight line and hope for the best.

“You’re doing wonderfully, Icarus!” Daedalus encouraged. “Keep flying in the middle.”

Which was when Percy remembered that he wasn’t mean to be cautiously drifting along with the wind. He was supposed to melt the wax seals by flying too near the Sun, or alternately, wet them by flying too close to the sea. Or maybe both. Or maybe Icarus had flapped his wings too vigorously for the hot glue to resist.

Either way, Percy was now faced with the horrible realisation that he was doing the opposite of what he ought to be doing.

If he had to face death to escape this mind trap, then he had to be Icarus and die!

The wobbly feeling that had resided in his stomach since he decided to accompany Nico to the Underworld finally refused to be restricted any further.

Percy threw up.

Mid-air.

Which, as any parachuter could have told you – was a patently unpleasant experience.

Percy fell, twisting and turning this way and that under the force of gravity and air currents. Desperately, he tried flapping his wings – no amount of fatalism curbing his desire to live.

The water came closer and closer, and Percy found himself desperately praying to his father to not have the impact hurt.

The sea had always been his refuge, the source of his power. Even in his own mind, he didn’t want to tar it with the memories of being flattened into a pancake.

If Poseidon heard, he didn’t bother to act.

Percy’s last memory was feeling every bone in his body break before a lucky splinter from his ribs bisected his heart.

***

Percy gasped awake, desperately clutching at the hand trying to rouse him.

“Son? Is everything alright?” Daedalus’ kind face inquired. “Did you have a nightmare?”

Percy stared in horror at the man.

“Am I,” he started before clearing his throat at the croak his voice escaped as.

“Am I still in the Labyrinth?”

Daedalus’ eyes were tormented even as he reassured, “Just for a few more days at most, Icarus. I promise – I will get you out of here.”

Percy choked, phantom pains wracking his body. It felt like his organs were still mush, his bones dust. His heart hurt as well – it could be gas, but the pounding was too irregular and persisted even after he sat up.

Maybe this time, he’d go from a heart attack, Percy thought hysterically. Clearly, dying once had not been enough for Chronos if he was still stuck inside this repeating memory.      

Daedalus pulled Percy into a hug.

Percy sniffed, the old man scent wafting from the inventor mixing with the smell of soot, grease, and industrial cleaner in a strangely soothing manner.

“I’ll get you out,” Daedalus promised.

“Right,” Percy wheezed out. “We’ll leave the labyrinth.”

Only for Percy to be plunged back into this prison if his death weren’t satisfactory enough for the invisible overseer of his mind.

Percy pulled back, resolving not to give Chronos the pleasure of watching him break down.

This wasn’t real. There was nothing for Percy to worry about.

The day proceeded just as its previous iteration, except this time, Percy knew with his mind things that only Icarus’s body had remembered. Despite the new confidence, though, Percy’s hands shook worse than before as he attached the wings to Daedalus’ back.

It was nothing compared to the vulnerability exposing his back to the inventor engendered. Every second of the man’s fumbling sent Percy’s heartbeat skyrocketing.

It was almost a relief when Minos announced his arrival with an ear-splitting crash.

“We must have more time,” Daedalus murmured. “They are too early! We need more time for the seal to hold.”

“It’s fine,” Percy assured the old man numbly. The seals not holding was the point.

Barely waiting for the man to finish attaching the last wing, Percy lunged at the manhole cover just as the door gave way to the battering ram.

Mino’s grandstanding gave him enough time to wrench the heavy metal cover away. In a repeat of the previous day, the metal wings caught the jet of hot air and launched Percy and Daedalus into the air.       

Percy faced severe problems straight away. His arms couldn’t resist flapping despite Daedalus’ admonishments to not stress the wax seals so soon. His legs kept paddling as if attempting to swim in the ocean, threatening to steer him off course and plunge him head-long into the solid ground.

Not that reaching the open ocean was any better.

Percy stared at the deceptively calm waves, transfixed.

He’d died there. He’d fallen, crashed, and gotten his heart pierced. His father’s domain – and it had destroyed him.

Almost without his volition, he angled the wings upwards, subconsciously determined to put as much distance between them as possible.

Just contemplating his imminent fall had chills wracking his body. The rising heat was a welcome reprieve to the cold.

Get over death.

Whoever thought experiencing a traumatic event multiple times would magically make you immune to it was an idiot and should be locked up with their own worst fear. Repeated exposure didn’t make the fear grow less – it just made you capable of doing something other than gibbering madly in fear.

Even as the altitude kept increasing, instead of being ensconced in the chill of the upper atmosphere, the rising heat had sweat drenching his tunic translucent.

Percy shuddered as he felt wax drip down his arm. Despite being tickled al over by his own perspiration, the thick liquid was just different enough for him to notice.

“Icarus!” Daedalus shouted. “Come down! Don’t fly so close to the Sun!”

Percy risked a glance downwards only to instantly regret it.

This was Lake Placid. Human-eating monsters were lying in wait to snap him up the moment he came within reach.

At first slowly, but then with increasing speed, metallic feathers dropped off his harness like Minos really was plucking him bare.

“Father, please, help me,” Percy begged inside his mind.

“Icarus!” Daedalus screamed brokenly as Percy plummeted down.    

***

This time, when Percy opened his eyes, it was pitch dark. The horses of the Sun chariot hadn’t even thought of peeking out of their stables, and Daedalus was just starting to shuffle around.

The faint light from the red embers reminded Percy of the fanciful images of the Fields of Punishment – full of boiling vats of oil, metal contraptions containing people spinning over flames, and the river of lava flowing nearby that would prevent them from ever escaping their torment.

He’d died. Twice.

He wasn’t trying for a third time before he acknowledged this wasn’t the best plan in the world.

He pressed a hand against his chest tentatively, feeling the reassuring thump-thump of his heart. It hadn’t even bothered to speed up, his body all too used to the adrenaline flowing through him.

He’d experienced death. Maybe now was the time to overcome it in a different manner altogether.

This time, Percy resolved, he was going to show Chronos what was really important.

Percy Jackson was going to live even while locked inside the body of a boy doomed to death. And if Chronos had a problem with it, the god could break this dream and scream at Percy face-to-face.

Chapter Text

Percy waited on tenterhooks as Daedalus laboured over attaching the last filament to the metal wing.

“Done!” Daedalus announced proudly.

“That’s wonderful!” Percy enthused, rushing over to the iridescently gleaming pair of wings the inventor had stretched out.

The next moment though, Percy banked his eagerness. “We need to hurry,” he warned. “There is no way Minos doesn’t know what we are up to – and if you knew the wings would be completed today, so does he.”

Daedalus’ face grew sombre. “You are right. Come, let me attach this to you.”

Since Percy knew the old man’s efficiency went down the moment he became encumbered by the heavy wings, Percy didn’t protest. This time, he was determined to make it through the day alive.

Wouldn’t it be funny if Chronos lit all of Percy’s plans on fire because the demigod had finally resolved to not take the god’s tyranny sitting down?

Keeping that in mind, it just behoved Percy to ensure their last-minute escape from the Labyrinth wasn’t left to fate to orchestrate. With his luck, he’d trip and fall onto one of the goons’ swords.

Clarisse would never let him forget it.

As he’d expected, Daedalus was a lot faster – and more exact – when it came to attaching the wings to Percy’s harness. Once done, Percy rolled his shoulders, trying to get accustomed to the weight. Yet again.

“Now, your turn,” he prompted Daedalus.

With the ease of practice, Percy’s fingers went about fastening the contraption nimbly.

“Just enough time to let the wax dry, and then we’re free!” Daedalus exulted.

Percy tapped his feet impatiently. “I don’t think Minos is going to give us that much time. Let’s just remain ready to pull up the manhole cover.”

Daedalus grimaced but agreed. It was only once they were crouched at either side of the plate that the old man broached the subject of what no doubt seemed to be his son’s uncharacteristic behaviour.

“Did the guards tell you something yesterday? Or did the gods send you a warning?”

Percy swallowed, suddenly realising the unwiseness of the position he’d placed himself in. In such close proximity, it was impossible to avoid the old man. The only thing that made it even remotely bearable was that Quintus had looked years younger than the person in front of him.

Daedalus might have ultimately decided to sacrifice his life to destroy the Labyrinth, but Percy would never forget that he was the reason Luke had managed to lead an assault on Camp Half Blood at all.

“I had a vision,” Percy mumbled out.

Daedalus’ brow furrowed. “Visons can sometimes be deceptive,” he warned. “What exactly did you see?”

Even though he knew this was a figment of his own imagination, that nothing he did here would affect his own life, Percy couldn’t help it. His words, when he spoke, addressed not that day, or that century, or even that millennium.

“I saw a place where half-blood children of the gods live safely. I saw a Titan uprising against the gods. And I saw you giving Ariadne’s thread to the leader of the Titan forces. I saw him navigate the Labyrinth with his army of monsters and slaughter the demigods.”

Daedalus paled. “Icarus, everything I have done for Minos has been to preserve our lives,” he pleaded. “It is not as if I enjoy knowing my inventions are being used to commit atrocities. But we are leaving now! Once you are beyond his clutches, there is nothing to make me obey his commands.”

“I didn’t mention Minos,” Percy pointed out.

Daedalus dismissed that. “I can think of no other reason to side with the Titans and monsters against the gods and demigods. My mother’s curse on me has already ruined your life. I dare say I need not mention the other resident of this labyrinth and how he came to be. The magnitude of the gods’ rage were I to forsake them does not bear thinking about.”

Percy swallowed, staring down at the intricately carved bronze manhole cover.

So, Daedalus’ only concern was what it would do to his son. But Icarus would not live past this day. The gods would take from him what he valued most. If he lost his son to the gods’ rage, why should they get to keep their own children?

Even then, Daedalus was better in some regards. He’d seen the children at camp, trained them, and ultimately – died to save them. 

All while the gods watched impassively from above.

A loud boom announced Minos’s arrival.

“Quick,” Percy urged Daedalus, gladly seizing the opportunity to change the topic.

With his muscles bulging in a disconcertingly unfamiliar manner, Percy helped the inventor prise open the cover. And before Minos could even break down the barred door, the duo was soaring over the walls of the Labyrinth.

This time, Percy desperately tried to convince himself that getting over death could literally be interpreted as not dying. So, in the service of that objective, flying right in the middle of the ocean and the Sun was doing as instructed. He was going to make it out of this day alive.

He refused to contemplate the alternative.

His thoughts must have been very persuasive because his aching arms and rickety wings carried him through the night and into the next morning.

Percy kept nodding off, only to wake up at the swooping sensation as he inevitably free dived.

Just like Percy’s mother, Daedalus didn’t seem to suffer from any such lethargy as he kept waking the demigod up.

“Icarus, look – that’s a pod of dolphins!”

“Icarus, now it’s your turn to navigate by the skies. Which star do you look at first?”

“Icarus, the wind has shifted a little – you need to flap your wings.”

Percy should have been grateful. His anxiety at being in the air, above the flat surface that had made a pulp out of Percy twice, however, combined with his sleeplessness to make him irritable. 

It was a relief when they finally landed at the shores of Sicily.

Percy wanted to do nothing more than fall asleep, and hopefully wake up back at the lip of the chasm into Tartarus, but the people who witnessed their arrival refused to give him the opportunity.

So, off they trekked all the way to King Cocalus’ palace, where Percy let Daedalus do all the talking.

As he watched the old man twist the king all around his fingers, Percy thought that being a statesman was something the inventor should have added to his resume. It wasn’t just anyone, after all, who could convince the ruler of a minor kingdom to offer refuge to a criminal wanted by Minos of Crete.

The next month passed in something approaching idyllic bliss. There were no battles to fight, no monsters to defeat, and no gods to placate. All Percy had to do was make friends with the people, train the king’s daughters in sword fighting, and occasionally help Daedalus in his workshop.

It was after one of his training sessions that Aelia, the eldest daughter, broke the tranquillity of his existence.

“Does something trouble you, Icarus?”

Other than the fact that everyone addressed him with the name of a long-dead boy? A few things.

“Why do you say that, princess?” he asked genially.

The eleven-year-old frowned. With her red hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, padded armour, and a blunt sword in her hand, she looked like an ancient warrior dispensing justice.

With a jolt, Percy realised that one day, she would become exactly that.

No, he chided himself. That was who she was – this was merely an interlude in his own mind that was yet to break.

“Every time you start to relax, you jerk back to alertness, as if repose is a curse,” Aelia scolded in tones wiser than her years. “You constantly look over your shoulder, even though you have not committed a single crime. And worst of all – most of the time, you are so lost in your thoughts that you have trouble responding to your own name.”

Percy stared at her, flabbergasted.

Well, alright. So, maybe, the idyllic bliss portion of this dream was its own trial. Percy was a city boy at heart. That said, if the options were between ancient Sicily and Pan’s kingdom – he would always pick nature.

He loved skateboarding – but they had yet to invent asphalt or vulcanized rubber. He liked running water and sanitation where waste was disposed of far away from him – but here, the only people capable of walking without a hand around their nose were those who made a habit of sniffing zinc. Or well, some sort of scent – zinc was just his poison of choice.

Worst of all? Every day, he’d wake up convinced that this would be the day he’d either find himself in Tartarus – or back in the Labyrinth.

And that was when the loneliness and the worry about what had befallen his family and friends let him fall asleep at all.

Whoever said that anticipation could kill was right.

Unable to reveal any of the above, he said, “There was a dream. And a prophecy that is probably about me. But I don’t know what to do about it.”

The girl’s lips twisted in a cute pout as she thought about it. “Have you visited the priests of the Bright One?” she finally asked. “They are generally quite good at interpreting the words of the gods.”

Percy snorted at this indirect referral to Apollo. “The priest called me by the wrong name. I’m pretty sure he’ll be of no use.”

“The wrong name – or not your name?” Aelia asked knowingly.

Percy froze, practice sword hanging limply from his hand.

She shrugged. “It’s fine. But you know what that means, right? There is one person who never fails, who is never wrong, who always knows everything – the Oracle of Delphi.”

Which was how, after long days and even longer arguments, Percy found himself at the foot of the bustling town of Delphi along with a group of pilgrims. Well, first Percy found himself washing off the grime of the road at the sacred spring, nearly blinded by the gleam of the cliffs on either side of the ravine.

But Percy was willing to suffer a little retinal damage if it prompted his subconscious into formulating an effective escape strategy.

The process apparently also required giving up one of Daedalus’ inventions as an offering at the cave housing the Pythia and smoking what Percy would swear was some variant of weed with the drowsy, relaxed state it left him in, before climbing down a steep stairwell into the bowels of Earth.

He ended up in a giant, rocky chamber. Cracks in the floor expelled sulphuric fumes into the air. A woman perched on a tripod stool right beside one of these fissures, sniffing the greenish smoke.

It gave him flashbacks to the mummy in the attic, but mercifully, this woman was still very much alive.

Well, so he hoped. It was impossible to really make an assessment with the head-to-toe veil situation she had going on.

Sceptical of this amounting to anything, yet having spent entirely too long in this dreamscape to not make the effort, Percy asked, “O Oracle, how do I wake up?”   

In a raspy voice, the woman said, “That is not the question you should be asking, young hero.”

What, should he inquire as to how to defeat Kronos, not lose his life, and stop any more demigods dying in a senseless war between the gods and titans?

“It is the one I have asked,” he countered.

The Oracle accepted his reticence with grace. Before going into a trance, however, she left him with a caveat, “Ambiguous questions often lead to equally uncertain answers.”

“Aren't you known for your cryptic answers?” Percy scoffed.

Percy had the sensation of being inspected.

“Perhaps,” the Oracle replied noncommittally. “But my answers are always crystal clear in hindsight. That the resolution is required for the petitioner to comprehend the solution is not my fault. But you … your answer will be different.”

There was silence before the figure swayed. Green smoke billowed around her, as if fanned by a hidden smoke machine, before she recited in an eerie voice:

A broken promise, prophecy sent astray
Your soul a swinging door into yesterday  
Death’s touch you must recognise
For a ray of light to open your eyes

Percy stiffened.

Watching the Oracle prophesy would never get less creepy. As it was, he barely resisted the urge to stomp on and dissipate one of the snakelike figures made by the smoke.

He was quickly ushered out by the priests, one of whom offered to interpret his prophecy for a hefty fee, but Percy declined the offer. Sulkily, he made his way past the stalls peddling keepsakes, fruits, and other religious paraphernalia.

“Icarus,” Dioni, one of the woman in his party, called out to him. “Don’t go too far child, your father would be devastated if something were to happen to you.”

“I won’t,” he shouted back, repressing the urge to scream at her that his name was not Icarus.

Struck by the need to vent he impulsively climbed up the rocky mountainside surrounding Delphi.

Once situated on an overlook above the town, he growled, “The Oracle is utterly useless, baffling, and disorienting. And my name, for your information, is Percy Jackson. Not Icarus, but Percy. Perseus if you must insist. Get it right, world!”

A sudden prickling along his spine had Percy whirling around, on the lookout for any monster attack. What he found, however, was something altogether different.

Soft, dissonant music heralded Apollo’s arrival. Maybe it was melodious to everyone else. But to Percy’s ears, it was the crashing of cymbals, the clashing of swords, the screeching of cats – it was as if the Universe itself was protesting the god’s existence.

Or maybe it was protesting their meeting.

The god was dressed in a yellow tunic, with a crown of laurel leaves on his head. His hair gleamed in the sunlight, while his eyes resembled clear blue oceans. He might have been trying to disguise himself as an ordinary mortal, but if so, it was a cursory effort indeed. His muscular arms shone as if oiled, his legs were planted with a surety no mortal could achieve on this unsteady ground, and the sandals on his feet were devoid of any stains whatsoever.

Most damning of all, a pressure radiated off the god’s slim figure that threatened to crush the demigod.

This was a god unflinchingly exposing his divinity. 

All along, Percy had treated this weird experience as something inside his head. Even now, Percy was tempted to dismiss all of this as just some hyper-realistic dream.

Then Apollo commented, “Such unflattering comments, Perseus Jackson. Or do you prefer Percy?” The god seemed to taste every single word before he uttered it.

The shock of those words, in that tone, plummeted Percy back to the very first time they’d ever met.

These same syllables had graced Apollo’s lips then. The strange look in the god’s eyes, that weird reference to a hero he reminded Apollo of – it all culminated into a horrifying realisation.

Percy stepped back in shock, slipped over the craggy ground, and tripped.  

The last thing he saw before his neck broke with a sickening crack was a pair of wide blue eyes.

Chapter Text

A hand shook his shoulder.

“Wake up son,” Daedalus urged.

Percy’s eyes shot open before he stared at the old man in befuddlement. Was he … back in the prison?

He traced the same bare walls, the same tables laden with mechanical devices, the same blushing sky.

“I’m back in time,” Percy breathed out.

“Icarus?” Daedalus’ voice warbled in confusion.

As Percy looked at the inventor, a wave of courage and spite washed over him.

“I’m not Icarus,” he denied.

Daedalus drew back, wariness entering his gaze. “Who would you be but Icarus?”

Percy sat up and tucked back the annoying brown curls that refused to obey his instructions. “Percy Jackson. From about three thousand years in the future.”

Daedalus stared.

Apropos to nothing, he placed a palm against Percy’s forehead.

Percy jerked away. “I don’t have a fever. Neither have I suddenly gone crazy.”

“Even the gods cannot turn back time,” Daedalus said worriedly. “Only give you visions until you grow convinced that you’ve lived through these events before.”

Percy struggled to his feet. He began stretching, itching to get rid of this rigidity from his limbs that he knew was due to sleeping on the ground, yet reminded him of his erstwhile dead status.

First step? Rotating his neck.

It was only once he was assured that his spine was still mercifully intact that he returned his attention to the gaping inventor.

“We need to hurry,” he informed the man. “Minos knows you’re building these wings, and he’s just waiting till the last moment so he can destroy all your hopes.”

“Icarus,” Daedalus pleaded. “Son, if you’re not feeling well, lie back down. I’ll handle the wings.”

Percy chortled. “You’ll be handling them anyway. It’s not as if I know how to craft metal wings that can actually fly.”

Then, as the man just kept gawking at him in stupefaction, Percy helped Daedalus to his feet as well.

“Listen,” he told the man. “It doesn’t matter if the soul here is mine, does it? The body is still your son’s. We need to escape anyway.”

Like hell Percy was giving up the first clue he’d received to escape this nightmare. The Labyrinth was beyond even the gods – but the sky wasn’t.

Apollo had known.

In Percy’s past, which was now Icarus’s future, Apollo had recognised him. Something with enough significance to stick in a god’s head for millennia – what, if not time travel, could manage to achieve that distinction?

Daedalus shook his head before making a symbol to ward off evil.

Percy waited with bated breath, almost willing the gesture to register him as a possessing entity and catapult him back to the correct time.

When nothing happened, Percy exhaled in disappointment. Daedalus, however, seemed to gain a degree of reassurance from the failure.

“Alright, Percy,” the inventor said in the tones of someone placating a deluded person. “Why don’t you rest here while I work on our escape plan? If you truly are not Icarus, then I am not sure I trust you to fulfil his duties.”

Percy frowned. There was nothing wrong with that rationale – but he’d already spent a month being Daedalus’ apprentice in all but name. He wouldn’t claim to be even beginner level at crafting, but he could at least fetch things and work the bellows. Being side-lined like this – chafed.

“The body knows what to do,” Percy protested.

“You understand why I hesitate to trust my son’s safety to that statement,” Daedalus said wryly.

Percy pouted. “It’ll go faster if I help,” he insisted, despite knowing Daedalus was not going to budge.

True to his expectations, the inventor led Percy back to the pallet he’d just abandoned and motioned for him to rest.

Percy managed to retain his seat for a few minutes while Daedalus puttered around. After a quarter of an hour, however, he’d had enough. Percy wasn’t meant to sit still, malingering in his own thoughts.

He jumped to his feet and resumed his job of pumping the bellows. Daedalus might have the technical know-how and delicacy to attach feathers to a frame, but the guy no longer possessed the strength to work a forge.

Daedalus shot him alarmed looks, but as Percy demonstrated his skill at not catching on fire while fanning the embers, the son of Athena slowly returned to his work. The only pause in their activities occurred when guards came to deliver their food.

Percy waited impatiently for Daedalus to finish his portion of the repast, eager to be out in the open air. Strangely enough, despite his repeated falls, the prospect of winging through the air had assumed an odd allure. Percy wanted to give it a try. Wanted to fly through Zeus’s domain without the god even being aware that Percy was flagrantly disobeying his orders.

Wanted to fly without the fear of being struck down by a paranoid god.

“Done,” Daedalus sighed, and Percy blinked back to himself. While he’d been busy fantasising about imitating a bird, Daedalus had managed to finish his food and the second wing as well.

“Great,” Percy cheered.

“Do you remember how to put it on?” the inventor quizzed.

Percy made a face. “I’ve done this three times before. And the last time, I didn’t even die due to the feathers coming loose.”

Daedalus stared. “You said you were from years in the future. And now you state you have experienced this same day at least thrice before?”

Percy shook his head. “Don’t ask. Suffice to say, I upset a god.”

Daedalus pursed his lips, unimpressed. “You have certainly upset a god,” he agreed. “The punishment, however, is unlikely to be what you suspect. Now come here and let me put the wings on you.”

Percy decided not to argue with the man. What did it matter whether Daedalus considered him Icarus enchanted to believe himself Percy, or Percy trapped in Icarus’s body? Percy knew which was true.

The speed with which Percy attached Daedalus’ pair of wings seemed to raise a few doubts in the inventor’s head.

Percy ignored the thrum of satisfaction that went through him, resolved to be the better person.

Just like last time, they waited until Minos attempted to break down the prison door to make their daring escape. This time, though, Percy was more confident.

He soared along the currents, higher and higher.

“Icarus!” Daedalus shouted from behind. “Not so high!”

 Percy dismissed those words.

“Lord Apollo!” he shouted.

Percy didn’t know what enabled the god to remember the past loop – perhaps his association with the Fates, or maybe his incessant tendency to peep on everyone in the guise of bringing about another day?

What he did know was that while Apollo might find the sight of a mortal tripping and breaking his neck at the sight of him ordinary, the god would have a harder time forgetting a flying human screaming his name.

There was no response, but Percy didn’t let that dissuade him.

“Lord Apollo!” he continued shouting. “We met at Delphi! You scolded me and I died. Except I’ve found myself back in the past. Please help me get back to my own time!”

Percy flapped his arms a few times as he lost altitude.

“Icarus!” he dimly heard Daedalus in the distance.

“Please, Lord Apollo,” Percy pleaded. “You’re the Sun God! If time travel is just a result of moving faster than the speed of light, can’t you slow down a little till I end up at the correct point in time?”

The Sun seemed to pause in its apparent revolution around Earth, before shining even brighter than before.

Percy flapped his wings harder, hoping against hope that this was a signal the god had heard him.

It was certainly a sign.

A gravelly voice, with the rage of a thousand stars behind it, boomed around him, “Apollo isn’t the Sun God! I, Helios, am the Titan of the Sun.”

Wait, hadn’t Helios faded due to lack of worship?

Unfortunately, Percy was forced to put further contemplation of the titan’s continued existence on hold. He had more important things to worry about – such as the laser beam shooting at him.

***

Percy woke up back in the Labyrinth, soul feeling distinctly singed. 

This time, he waited until both Daedalus and he were settled at Cocalus’ court before deviating from the one life in which he’d managed to make it past that fateful day.

One week after escaping the Labyrinth, Percy sat in a field. Ostensibly, he was watching the cattle graze. In reality? He was fuming and cursing Apollo under his breath.

In English – he wasn’t stupid.

Best part? He could say, “Apollo, you’re a blot on the face of Earth! Useless, blond, and airheaded!” and not wait on tenterhooks for retribution, because technically … Apollo was the wrong name.

The Greek Apollo was Apollon.

Now that he had had some time to recover from the shock, he could acknowledge that he might have made a few missteps. Forgetting that Apollo wasn’t the god’s current name, that Helios hadn’t been downgraded until Roman times, and even that neither of the two had any reason to pay attention to poor Icarus who was fated to die.

He could understand his ignoble last death.

That didn’t mean he was willing to forgive or forget. Cursing Apollo out, however, certainly made it more bearable.

“I saved your sacred cows from becoming monster chow, and you can’t even bother helping me out now?” Percy continued shouting recriminations. “I broke my neck because you surprised me, and then that Sun Titan burnt me alive because you were too busy reciting horrible haikus! Your Oracle is the one who made the prophecies that started all this. But what else can you expect from a god, right? You create monsters, and we’re the ones who have to defeat them.”

He was stuck in the past, and Apollo couldn't even be bothered helping a little?

“Take responsibility!” Percy shook a fist at the air. “Your Oracle said a ray of light to open your eyes! Light up the place and get me home, you laggard!”

Percy exhaled, satisfaction at releasing his frustrations loosening his shoulders.

“You wanted to see me, did you?” a melodious voice whispered in his ear. “Well, here I am.”

Percy yelped and tumbled head over heels – rolling a few feet away before coming to a rest on his back.

The Sun in his eyes made it impossible to make out anything. Then a shadow fell over him, and Percy’s desperate blinking to clear teary eyes bore fruit.

A golden youth, clad only in a yellow loincloth and a purple cape, stood over him.

Percy blushed. He’d almost gotten used to the casual nudity and lack of clothes common to this era, but suddenly having so much golden skin exposed without any warning had an old frisson of embarrassment washing over him.

Then he noted the face smiling so cruelly at him and paled. “Apollo?”

“All those words … were you not expecting me to answer?” the god mocked.

The adrenaline zinging up his spine had Percy forgetting his misery. He leaped to his feet.

“Uh, um,” he vacillated. “What makes you think I was talking about you?”

“Your equivocation wasn’t that effective,” the god deadpanned.

Percy blanched. In a small voice, he asked, “Are you going to curse me even worse that I already am?”

Cassandra, after all, had suffered. A lot. And he doubted she’d insulted Apollo as thoroughly as him.

Apollo smiled, though there was nothing genial about his gaze. “Now, now. Why don’t you first tell me about the ways in which I’ve disappointed you? I’d hate to act without all the information.”

Percy gulped.

That seemed a recipe for disaster.

Chapter Text

Apollon was a busy deity.

Lighting up everyone’s lives with music and dance, healing countless maladies, guiding sailors to harbour, dispensing advice about the future, establishing laws, and so much more … it was tiring work.

Not so tiring that he’d miss someone calling out a variation of his name. That’s how you found out which city to inflict a plague on, after all.

“Apollo, you’re a blot on the face of Earth! Useless, blond, and airheaded!”

The words were mangled, the sounds garbled as though passing through a torrential river – but the strength of the sentiments was enough to make their meaning clear to Apollon.

The god abandoned his lyre and drew his bow and arrow instead. Whichever creature had dared to impugn him so would soon discover its mortality first hand.

He aligned his nocked arrow with the young man’s heart before pausing.

It wasn’t the mussed curls on his head, the bronze skin that glinted under Helios’s rays, or the somewhat fetching pout. Not even the fact that this was one of the two humans who had recently sent Athena into one of her unsufferable fits of conceit.

The strings of Fate didn’t touch the man.

The momentary hesitation was enough for the mortal to continue his blasphemy. But the thoughts so sacrilegious they could no longer even be termed prayer, referenced impossibilities that were nonetheless true.

Apollon would have judged him a loon, killed him, and even felt proud of himself for the good deed.

If not for the way the strings hovered around the mortal, drawn like moths to a flame yet shying away just before they could make contact.

Apollon dismissed Melpomene’s curious gaze and departed the garden they’d spent the past week composing in. Fury still beat an ascending soundtrack to his steps, but Apollon was willing to wait before acting. If this were a deluded mortal, he’d put him out of his misery in a suitably painful manner.

However, if there was even a glimmer of truth to the thoughts sent to him in prayer (which there was. Apollon was the God of Truth. What ridiculousness to expect him to fail at discerning the truth), then the god needed to get to the bottom of the matter.

The youth didn’t notice his approach, despite Apollon making no efforts to hide his divine presence. It made the fall the divine legacy took upon registering the god even more satisfying.

The mortal’s subsequent twitchiness might have assuaged a little of his wrath – but his habit of meeting Apollon’s eyes disrespectfully was absolutely infuriating. The lack of fear in those grey eyes had him wishing to really show the boy just why even immortals trembled at the thought of angering Phoebus Apollon.

He resisted.

“Well,” he prompted. “Finally learned prudence, albeit too late to save your skin?”

The boy seemed to come to a resolution before stating bluntly, “Not really. Just wondering if I care enough about the time-space continuum and the effects of a time loop on it to not tell you everything.”

Despite being spoken in the correct tongue and not the made-up medium he’d utilised earlier, the legacy’s words were incomprehensible.

Apollon’s lips almost slipped into a snarl before he controlled himself. “Oh?”

“I don’t,” the boy added. “In case you were curious.”

“Then tell me,” Apollon hissed. Tell him how the brat had managed to terrify the strings of Fate into complaisance when even the god himself had yet to manage the feat.

The young man shrugged, calculation barely hidden by the gesture. “I asked a god with powers of time to speed it up – his response was to send me to the past, and then loop time so that no matter what, I always wake up at the exact same moment.”

Apollon scoffed. “That is not possible.”

“That’s what I thought,” Icarus agreed wryly. “You’re the one who convinced me otherwise.”

Apollon drew back, unsure what he felt about that. “I am good at eliciting epiphanies,” he deflected, unwilling to reveal any hesitance.     

The young man snorted, his dark curls bouncing from the movement. “That’s one way to put it. Bet we’d be in serious trouble if Archimedes’ epiphany was followed by him tripping on the wet floor and breaking his neck.”

Apollon frowned. The young man’s thoughts brought to life the image of a son of Hephaestus on par with Daedalus himself, renowned all over the world for his genius.  And yet – Archimedes didn’t exist.

Was it a dream? Perhaps, instead of travelling through time, the boy simply had a sight so powerful that he foresaw future possibilities and mistook them for present reality?

But no, that didn’t explain the confused tangle of strings around his frame.

Icarus shook his head. “But that wasn’t it. You said something that you repeated to me in the future. In my past. You knew about me being here – which means this is real.”

Apollon frowned, rage getting steadily subsumed by confusion and concern. “Have you considered that you simply saw me say something in a vision, that then came true?”

Icarus scowled. “My life wasn’t a vision. I suppose you could argue that all of this is in my head, and that I’m simply so desperate to escape it that I imagined you repeating something real. But I’m not that far gone yet. I’ve only died a few times yet.”

Apollon would be sure to remedy that. People struck by his arrows were unlikely to get up and start wandering around.

“What exactly did you see my Oracle prophesy?” he asked instead.

A little wrinkle in his forehead was the only sign that the boy was struggling to recall something. Then, in a voice that echoed in a manner even Apollon would call eerie, he recited,

“A broken promise, prophecy sent astray
Your soul a swinging door into yesterday  
Death’s touch you must recognise
For a ray of light to open your eyes.”

As the youth turned inquiring eyes towards him, Apollon carefully pretended ambivalence. Inside, however, he was reeling. That … was a real prophecy. The threads of fate dancing around Icarus, approaching him only to be repelled, made that abundantly clear.

He could even understand why the man might consider Apollon the ray of light in this situation. But death … Apollon hated death. That was a concept not allowed in conjunction with him unless it was in terms of a bestower of the state. And even then, depending on the circumstances, Apollon could, and had, loathed it.

To say that Apollon had a thorny relationship with Thanatos was to say Helios burned a little warm.

But it wasn’t a prophecy Apollon remembered. How could his Pythia possibly make a prophecy that hadn’t been directed through him? He could believe not understanding the contents of the prophecy. Not ignorance of one existing in the first place.

“Prophecy sent astray?” he queried lightly instead of revealing his apprehensions.

Icarus winced. “Well, there was another prophecy about me in the future. One which, in fact, stated that I would make it to sixteen past all odds.”

The boy snorted, looking older than his years. “Fat load of good that did. Unless it’s not me, after all, in which case we’re probably all doomed anyway.” 

Apollon huffed, frustrated. Another prophecy? Ordinarily, he could simply see the way a person was entrapped by Fate and tell whether they would be affected by a prophecy. That was impossible when the strings refused to do anything but flutter around the man uselessly.

“The way you go on, you make me believe I have become obsolete,” Apollon cursed. “So many prophecies apparently pronounced without any intervention from me? Have you been visiting the Grove of Dodona?”

The young man blinked in befuddlement. “The Grove of what?”

Apollon backtracked. Far be it for him to advertise some other deity’s oracle, especially one more ancient than any he possessed. “You claim they were all made by my Oracles?”

“Yes,” Icarus stated derisively. “There’s only one creepy Oracle that hisses out green smoke snakes, and that’s yours. Though I have to admit – good job on keeping this one alive. The one in the future is … pretty dead.”

Apollon looked at him expressionlessly. “I need to think about this.”

The look of desperation on the boy’s face sent a thrill up Apollon’s spine.

“Wait, you’re leaving already? You haven’t even asked me which god created this loop,” Icarus rushed out.

Apollon ran indifferent eyes over the man’s subtly beseeching frame. Were he to paint the mortal, he’d term it Flight Arrested – a tribute to the extended fall Icarus was experiencing.

The mortal might have escaped Helios and Poseidon, but Athena’s curse would hold true. Icarus was born to die. His attempts to forestall the inevitable were akin to a fish thrashing on land. The fish was already dead – it just hadn’t realised it yet.

Apollon didn’t bother answering. He revealed his true form, only somewhat disappointed when Icarus showed enough awareness to close his eyes, before departing in a flash.

He didn’t go far. Invisible and motionless, Apollon hovered silently over the young man.

“And he’s gone!” Icarus laughed, sounding on the verge of tears. “Don’t know why I expected otherwise. Clearly, his part of the prophecy is done – he opened my eyes. Now, I need to accomplish the rest. Like always.”

Apollon watched.

The young man ran a frustrated hand through his hair, before mumbling to himself, “Alright. So, it’s not in my head. I suppose it’s time to go the Ares route – I have to find Chronos and beat him up until he releases me.”           

Apollon twitched. Kronos? Icarus believed this situation was endangered by the Titan?

Any reservations Apollon might have had about his plan of action faded. He drew his bow, nocked an arrow, aimed, and shot.

The young man clutched his chest, gasped, and staggered.

A cow in the fields mooed and ambled over in concern.

Icarus had stopped moving before the creature even came close enough to nudge the young man with a hoof.

The coil that his guts had twisted into relaxed. Apollon dismissed his bow where it had come from, inordinately relieved to have this pesky youth dead. Still, struck by a senseless notion, he waited.

His patience was rewarded – or should punished perhaps be the right word?

The strings of fate curling around the dead body should have woven themselves into the surrounding tapestry. Only one should have flapped uselessly in the air as a remnant of the life Icarus had lived.  

Instead, they wrapped around Icarus like a shroud before sinking into the body as if it were a black hole subsuming all around it. Apollon half expected the nearby cow and the grass the legacy lay on to also disappear into his cavernous stomach.

Instead, the world seemed to … shiver. Shift. Before returning to its everyday orientation.

Except something was wrong. Apollon twisted his head around, trying to detect the source of his unease. Best case scenario, he was simply reacting adversely to the presence of one of Thanatos’s minions.

But no.

The longer he searched, the more he failed to find any of those daemons. He snapped his eyes back at the dead body.

It was still there, as stationary as one of the victims of Apollon’s arrows ought to be. Then, where was death? And, even if Apollon had inadvertently chosen the one moment when all the minions were unavoidably detained, why was Icarus’s soul still resting within his body?

Apollon reluctantly ventured closer. He would not even have bothered, simply choosing to incinerate the body into ash, if not for that mention of the Titan. Especially since it did make sense – there were several deities with power over time. But one sadistic enough and unconcerned about the potential ramifications to actually violate the laws of the Universe on such a scale – that left very few suspects.

And if Icarus had come into contact with Kronos while trapped in the Labyrinth, it was a cause for concern for everyone.

If Kronos had mustered enough energy to literally turn back time, Father would have to be informed. This went beyond anything the Titan had attempted till now. A creature trapped in Tartarus, incapable of aught but whispering in the defenceless minds of mortals, should not have this power.

No wind blew, yet Apollon’s hair fluttered into his eyes.

He brushed it back, irritated at having his vision obstructed by his own curls. He should grow it longer and tie it at the back during important occasions.

He returned to playing his lyre, but the resultant discordant twang had Melpomene twitching.

Apollon grimaced apologetically at the Muse. He couldn’t understand why his mind was distracted. He tried to re-join the harmony that had existed between the two of them, but it was difficult.

His fingers kept straying off course and striking clashing notes.

“Apollon,” Melpomene finally sighed. “You are breaking my concentration.”

Apollon pouted at her. “Is that a hint to make myself scarce?”

She looked at him in exasperation. “No,” she said knowingly, “that was a hint for you to expel this bug inside. You have clearly been struck by the desire to compose some warlike, alarmist piece of music. Do as the mind wills, and then return to my words.”

She sighed dreamily. “This tragedy … will be one of my best. People will remember it even millennia later. The instruments it is played on might become broken husks, the tune my words are set to might fade from memory, but this story … will be everlasting.”

Apollon stared, fingers twitching. He did not understand where this disconcertion had suddenly emerged from, but if Melpomene was willing to sacrifice even a moment of his time from composing her latest masterpiece, then it was serious.

He stared at his lyre intently and struck a chord.

It sounded like the beginnings of a funeral dirge.     

Chapter Text

Percy woke up back in the Labyrinth, at a loss.

How?

All he remembered was a sharp ache in his chest, somewhat similar to the pain the night he’d stuffed his stomach to bursting at camp. But how could he have gas when all he’d eaten was bread and fruit?

“Wake up, son,” Daedalus urged.

Percy stared at the old man, confused beyond words.

“I think I had a heart attack,” he said numbly.

A look of alarm crossing his face, Daedalus immediately put his ear against Percy’s chest. Simultaneously, bony fingers gripped the demigod’s wrist in a vice grip guaranteed to leave marks.

Apparently unable to catch anything concerning enough, Daedalus lifted his head.

“Can you see clearly?” he asked urgently.

Percy blamed his confusion for his nonsensical answer.  “It’s not nearly bright enough for the word clear to be used?”

Daedalus didn’t let it dissuade him. He rose to his knees and instructed, “Follow my finger.”

Percy blinked before doing as told.

Daedalus wove his hand in increasingly complex patterns, following which made Percy’s eyeball’s ache at the strenuous exercise right after bed.

But it seemed to satisfy the inventor. He put down his hand and proceeded with the next set of instructions. “Take a deep breath and tell me if it hurts.”

Percy obeyed the words, certain he should not be supine while checking for any after-effects of a heart attack.

“What is your name?”

Percy was struck with an inappropriate moment of hilarity. He imagined saying his real name and Daedalus’ consequent paroxysms but resisted.

“Icarus,” he answered instead.

“Try to stand up,” the inventor stated, barely hidden anxiety wrinkling up his forehead even more than usual.

Percy took care to be steady while getting to his feet, convinced that the slightest stumble would send the aged inventor into his own heart palpitations.

It seemed to be that sort of day.

For good measure, he even walked around a little, well used to navigating the prison cum workshop by now. Once he’d made a circuit without running into anything, Percy stretched out his hands. “There, see? I’m fine.”

Daedalus bowed his head. “Thank you, Lord Apollon, the greatest of all healers, for your mercy.”

The fervent prayer had Percy rearing back a little, but on second thought, he supposed it wasn’t any different from a particularly pious person thanking their god for something good.

Having actually met the gods though – it seemed a very strange thing to do. Especially since the real Apollo hadn’t twitched even a fingernail in aid.

Then he sighed. No, that wasn’t entirely fair.

He’d dumped something life-changing on what was, essentially, a pretty young god. Well – he assumed. He had no clue how old Apollo actually was. But he was definitely two thousand years younger than the Maserati driving, haiku spouting, irreverent god who couldn’t bother setting down his iPod even during a Council session.  

It stood to reason the god would require some time to think. It was Percy and his weak heart that had deprived them of the opportunity to make plans.

Percy straightened, determined to reconnect with Apollo, and this time, stay alive long enough for them to crack the code.

Percy pushed to the side the concern of how to prevent a sudden heart attack (or any other fatal conditions) as his health deteriorated from the strain of multiple time loops. Apollo was the healer, right? No doubt, a single healing jab would fix Percy up in a jiffy.

He hoped.

“We should get on with the escape,” Percy said uncomfortably. “Minos is definitely not going to wait any further.”

“But you’re ill,” Daedalus protested. “You should be resting, not pumping bellows and flapping your arms to stay aloft.”

Percy relinquished some of the animosity he felt towards the inventor. It was hard to do otherwise in the face of the clear care expressed towards him.

“I’ll be fine,” he reassured. “As you said, I have the blessing of a god. This won’t be the end of me.”

Unfortunately, the blessing upon him was more of a curse. Sure, he didn’t remain dead. But he never progressed with his life either. Especially since this wasn’t his life in the first place.

Daedalus didn’t appear convinced, but what other option did he have? Like all the days that had come and gone without notice, the two of them set about their self-assigned duties.

Following the execution of a well-trodden path to success, the latest iteration of the next day found Percy loitering near the shore of Kamikos, the small kingdom Cocalus ruled in what was modern-day Sicily.

The rugged landscape and abundance of mysterious coves should have heightened both Percy’s curiosity and wariness.

All he could focus on, however, were the bright blue waters and glittering Sun.

What should have been a wonderful day to be outside, had deteriorated into a mess of contradictory feelings. All of a sudden, Percy understood the term pathetic fallacy like he never had before. It was pathetic and false to believe that the weather could reflect your emotions. He was a puny mortal – and his only control over nature came from his father’s blessing.

A father that refused to acknowledge him.

Percy looked away from the inviting but deadly waves and set about calling out to Apollo.

“Lord Apollon!”

Despite the high pitch, his voice barely went past a whisper.

Percy cleared his throat. He knew the loudness of his voice wouldn’t affect the probability of his words reaching Olympus, but the apprehension in it disgusted him.

He was perfectly willing to roam the world until he found the current version of Chronos and tricked him into undoing this torture.

But some help would not go amiss. Someone capable of retaining the information that he wasn’t Icarus, but Percy, wouldn’t go unappreciated.

“Apollo!”

The god was as silent as Poseidon had been to all of Percy's previous pleas.

The demigod gritted his teeth. “Apollo. Are you going to ignore me unless I insult you? I’m willing to do that, but then whatever I say is on you. You asked for it.”

Not a rationale he would generally apply to anything, but gods were a different matter.

“Apollo, the producer of shitty poems.”

The next moment, a binding light illuminated the shore. By the time Percy was done blinking away the spots in his vision, the unimpressed figure of a god stood before him.

“Insulting me is certainly a way to get my attention,” Apollo noted dourly. “But not one most people dare attempt.”

Percy snorted. “If I’d died instantly, I suppose I wouldn’t have tried it again. But here I am, so...”

Apollo frowned. No doubt, the expression was filled with irritation, but it was devoid of the true wrath that had practically radiated off the god last time. He was dressed more casually in a yellow tunic as well, as if he had just appeared without bothering to put on airs.

“There is something exceedingly strange about you,” Apollo assessed.

“You must like it,” Percy smirked. “After all, you’re still here.”

Apollo nodded gravely. “And here I will remain until I burn you to ashes. Now, mortal. Speak. If you were willing to brook my rage for this request of yours, why hesitate over irrelevant matters?”

Percy was tempted to make a quip about how bringing an angry god to a confused halt could never be irrelevant, but chose the wiser option. Athena must be proud – the possessor of her grandson was picking the right choices.

“My name is Percy Jackson,” Percy started. “I am a demigod son of Poseidon, about two to three thousand years from now. Due to some terrible mishap involving an upset god, I somehow found myself in the body of Icarus. And if that’s not enough, every time I die, I wake up at the exact same moment in time – back in Icarus’s body.”

Apollo closed his eyes. “And how many times,” he asked slowly, “have you died? Be descriptive.”

Percy fidgeted. That was a little morbid, wasn’t it? But if it would convince Apollo of the truth, then it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?

Percy took in a deep breath, then exhaled. “Um, well, the first time, I crashed into the sea.”

“But you profess to be a son of Poseidon,” Apollo pointed out.

Percy released a shaky breath, unable to counter that. “Well,” he finally said. “My soul’s a son of Poseidon. This body – is related to Athena. I suppose I should be glad father waited long enough for me to fall instead of simply plucking me from the sky.”

Apollo’s lips did a little twitch but he resisted any more comments.

Percy rocked back on his feet, unwilling to contemplate the time he’d deliberately flown towards the Sun. “The second time, the wax melted. The wings fell off. I … crashed. Again.”

Apollo’s golden eyes reminded Percy of a bird of prey. They weren’t cruel – but they were willing to snap at him the instant he showed a moment of weakness.

“The third ... well, I tripped and broke my neck.”

“That’s anticlimactic,” Apollo stated.

Percy chuckled. “It’s actually my best death?” his voice went up at the end, automatically turning it into a question. “I was actually really happy to see you. Just shocked. And then I fell down.”

Apollo’s chin went up. Percy couldn’t tell whether this was ego or surprise, but either way, he pressed on. “Then came Helios. That guy hates me. First, he melts my wax, then he burns me to cinders?”

Apollo made a so-so gesture. “He’s sensitive. You get that way when you drive the Sun chariot.”

Percy stared. “Shouldn’t it be the opposite? You drive the Sun chariot. What’s there to be sensitive about?”

At Apollo’s inscrutable silence, Percy continued on as an aside, “And who even is Helios? I thought he got downsized and you became the Sun God.”

There – flattery to distract from the fact that he’d skipped the last loop altogether. No need to inform the god of how Apollo had never been a hundred per cent into supporting Percy. Or that the god's future champion was suffering from an unnamed time malady.

Who knew – maybe Percy only had one heart through the loops? And every single loop had that same heart pumping blood for every single body!

Percy mentally slapped himself. No way any god could be even remotely that logical. This wasn’t even his own heart.

He ignored the pang deep inside where Chronos had reached in. That wasn’t his heart.

Apollo’s eyebrows did a weird movement, as if they dearly wanted to fly up but also desired nothing more than to come together in a thunderous frown.   

Finally, with a twitch in his cheek, the god said, “Your caretakers must really despise you.”

“Well, Icarus was a hostage, and my stepfather tried to put me in prison, so I suppose you’re not completely wrong,” Percy pointed out. “But why would you say so?”

“Telling you false tales about the gods is just setting you up to be killed by one,” Apollo explained, an amused glint in his eyes. “Helios, for example, would be very offended to have me be praised as the Sun God.”

“I know,” Percy responded sardonically. His scorched body was ample proof of that.

Then, instead of insisting that Apollo would one day be the Sun God (he had a feeling the guy was understandably wary of Helios), Percy said, “But you’re not offended that I don’t even know which domains are yours?”

Contrary to expectations, Apollo actually pretended to brush lint off his chiton.

“Well, I am Phoebus,” the god preened. “Completely understandable why you’d assume I am the source of all light everywhere.”

At Percy’s confused expression, the god’s smile grew a little fixed. “Phoebus means bright, shining. Do you not know the language?”

Percy frowned. The two words had sounded remarkably similar, and yet – while the first instance felt like a Phoebus, the next one had been more … Phoibos, perhaps? They felt like two entirely different languages, yet now that his mind got busy translating them, they meant the same.

Or perhaps, his brain had never registered a name as something meant to be translated?

That’s when Percy had the epiphany. “Phoebus is Latin! I’d never heard your Greek name until you said it just now!”  

Apollo’s disturbed expression notified him that he might have blurted out something inappropriate.

“Latin? What language is that?” the god inquired delicately.

Percy opened and closed his moth a few times before saying weakly, “Say, have you built Troy yet?”

Apollo pointed a trembling finger at his chest. “I am Phoebus Apollon. I tell people where and when to build cities – why would I personally build one? And Troy already exists.”

“The Trojan War?” Percy suggested faintly. How could he possibly explain Latin when he couldn’t even reference Aeneas yet?

“Are you quite right in the head?” Apollo inquired solicitously. “No, right? That’s probably what the threads signify. The Fates want me to fix you.”

Percy rapidly took a few steps back. “Dude, you sound like you’re contemplating a lobotomy. No, alright? The strings probably indicate the prophecies tying us together as source and subject.”

Although, what if Apollo could see a chopped thread floating in the air? Percy still remembered that terrifying spectacle put on by the Fates when he was twelve. Just another day in the life of Percy Jackson – the undergoer of events that would always come back to bite him in the ass.

At Apollo’s unconvinced mien, Percy amended his words. “Did I say probably? I mean definitely. No fixing my brain.”

At this point, even the dyslexia was useful – he was something approaching functionally literate without ever studying the language. Not that people wrote to him. Nor was he the studious type to pore over ancient manuscripts – especially when they were mainly business accounts inscribed on clay tablets. He wasn’t Annabeth.

The name sent longing rushing through Percy, but he pushed it aside for the moment.

Apollo sighed before complaining, “Do you understand the impossibility you are expecting me to believe?   

“Are you not supposed to be the God of Truth?” Percy challenged. “Are your powers malfunctioning or do you just not believe the proof of your own sight and hearing?”

“Mind your tongue or you’ll find yourself without one,” Apollo snapped.

Percy refused to back own. “Then stop lying to yourself. You know I’m saying the truth. You can see there are prophecies surrounding me that you have no clue about even though your Oracle was the one to state them. And you still want to pretend otherwise?”

Apollo worked his jaw before saying in a deceptively calm voice, “Prophecies that I do not know about? Have you perhaps skipped a particular loop where you we spoke? Or did you perhaps deliberately mislead me into underestimating the time it took you to break your neck after sighting me?”

The god’s voice might have been practically sedate, but the heat emanating from him was anything but. Steam rose around Apollo as his suppressed rage vaporised the moisture in the sea air.

Percy took a step back, unwilling to get incinerated once again. “Well, it was a bit … scary?”

The show of vulnerability ought to calm him down a little, right? Gods liked terrified compliance.

“Oh?” Apollo hissed, taking a step forward and invalidating Percy’s attempts to put distance between them.

“Um. So … I think … Chronos has freaky mad powers that are terrible for my heart. I had a heart attack. Right after speaking to you, in fact. I was kind of hoping if I brought it up in a sneaky enough manner once you were a little attached, you’d be more inclined to heal me.”

Apollo froze. “Chronos?”

“The God of Time?” Percy prompted.

The god’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh, him.”

That’s when Percy realised. “Oh, you thought I was talking about the Titan. No, it was to fight him that I needed Chronos’s help. Though now, I’m pretty sure I would have done better without.”

Apollo looked down, his long lashes casting shadow below his eyes. The god looked like he had dark circles, all of a sudden.

“You have approached me – because you believe I can help you defeat the Crooked One?” Apollo whispered.

Percy’s lips twisted with bitterness. “I don’t expect you to help me with that. I don’t expect any god to help me with that. While the Titans take to the field and destroy everything, gods apparently don’t believe in intervening except to curse uppity demigods.”

Percy swallowed. “You’re right,” he finally admitted. “There’s nothing to be gained from you. I just wanted to have someone who remembered.”

Apollo’s face shot up. “Remember what? The so-called loops?”

Percy licked salt off his lips. “Yeah. The so-called loops that you have no clue about. Clearly, this was useless.”

Apollo blinked. “Why did you think I would remember anyway? If you are the only one to loop …”    

Percy bit his lower lip. “I misremembered something.”

“That’s a lie,” Apollo snarled, unexpectedly furious.

“As you said,” Percy bit out. “You won’t remember. So, what does it matter if I lie?”

Apollo’s lips parted. Bracketed by the Sun and roaring waves, luminescent like the stars, the god appeared truly deitylike.

“I’ll remember,” Apollo breathed out. “This impertinence, I’ll remember. But if you really wish to ensure it, you should make me a sacrifice.”

Percy swallowed, trepidation freezing him to the bones. “What sort of sacrifice,” he managed to ask after a few long moments.

Apollo smiled. “Your suffering is the only sacrifice I am willing to accept.”

Chapter Text

Percy didn't trip.

That was his only consolation when he woke up once more in the labyrinth.

He didn't trip.

He didn't even choke to death at a god's hand, which was a regret he never thought he'd entertain.

Maybe it was divine intervention, he thought hopefully. He wouldn’t put it past Zeus. Minos was one of his sons, wasn’t he? No doubt the guy took umbrage at having his evil bully for a son outwitted and took revenge on behalf of the mortal king.

How else could a bird just happen to drop a rock on his head at that very moment otherwise?

A rock that brained him to death.

Apollo's incredulous expression at least indicated it wasn't his intervention.

Didn't mean Percy was going to approach that guy for anything. Now that he had found out there was something strange about his string, all he needed to do was mention it to any god he might need to convince. Apollo couldn't be the only one with supernatural sight.

“Father?” Percy asked tremulously.

“Yes, Icarus?” Daedalus appeared worried at this sudden weakness in his son.

“Do you think you could make something to propel us into the future?” Percy said dreamily.

Daedalus blinked, but Percy could see the sharp brain whirring behind grey eyes shared by every single one of his siblings.

“I probably could,” Daedalus ultimately answered. “But it is unlikely to be as instantaneous as you no doubt imagine. And it would be useless for our purposes here. Most likely, it would entail freezing our bodies in our current state, going to a safe location, placing ourselves in a long sleep, and then waking up to find that time had elapsed.”

Percy pouted as he levered himself into a sitting position. “What if we were stuck repeating this same day over and over again? Could you fix that?”

Daedalus laughed. “Such a thing would be the consequence of angering a god, Icarus. And by now, I have learnt not to overestimate them. It might just be beyond even my powers – especially if all I can retain is my brain.”

“But you’re the cleverest person in existence,” Percy cajoled. Even Athena had acknowledged Daedalus’ genius, though deploring the path it had taken him to.

Daedalus patted Percy on the shoulder, a small smile playing at his lips. “Now, now. We’ll try to make your device to break time once we’re out of here.”

Percy beamed. “Yes, father.”

Was he taking advantage of the guy’s affection for his son? Yes.

Was he sorry about it? Not really.

Percy had no intentions of dying that day, after all. If he manged to break this time loop, all that would be left was departing Icarus’s body. At which point, Daedalus would be left with an alive son and not one fossilised at the bottom of the ocean.

What was a little harmless deception compared to that? 

True to his resolution, the day proceeded as safely as a ride through the heavens on wings held together by wax could. At this point, Percy could proudly say that he’d give even a bird a run for its money. Not Blackjack, but the Pegasus was completely different competition.

As expected, Cocalus was ecstatic to have the Daedalus in his employ, albeit under a pseudonym. Percy waited a couple of days for the inventor to adjust to freedom and his brand-new position as advisor and teacher before broaching the subject again.

Daedalus set down his tweezers and looked up from his latest contraption.

Percy didn’t know what it was meant to be, only that it was confusing mass of wires, gears, and other, indecipherable, mechanical devices.

No doubt, it would soon join the rest of its brethren and take place of pride until a newcomer arrived to dethrone it. That was what had happened to all the other items Daedalus constructed practically every hour, as if eager to fill up the room Cocalus had assigned him as a workshop.  

The goggles on the guy’s eyes cast a reddish tinge across his face, making him look like a demon. “You were serious about that?” the inventor queried dubiously.

Percy nodded fervently. “Time loops and how to break them!”

Daedalus frowned. “Well, as a concerned father, I feel I must ask. Is this a hypothetical scenario you have thought up, or are you …?”

Percy looked down, a woebegone expression on his face. “I didn’t want to worry you,” he mumbled. “But … this is not the first time we’ve escaped from the Labyrinth. Or the second. Or even the fifth. And every time I die, I just find myself back there. On that day.”

Daedalus voice quavered when he insisted, “lcarus, if this is some ploy to spend more time with me, you have no need of such. I am always willing to be with you.”

Percy’s head shot up in shock. “Who’d say something strange like this as a ploy? You think it’s funny to die? I’ve yet to make it past a year. At this point, I’ve even sailed to Delphi to meet a particularly useless Oracle, shouted at the Sun Titan, pleaded with the Sea God, and brought the God of Prophecy’s wrath down on me twice. I’m pretty sure last time, it was the King of the Gods who killed me. I am desperate.”

Percy regretted his words the very next moment. The horror in the old inventors’ eyes wasn’t the emotion he’d wished to elicit.

“Icarus,” Daedalus breathed out. “You … not even a year? So long stuck with Minos, and freedom isn’t yours for even a year?”

Percy swallowed. “So, you can understand why I really need your help.”

Daedalus steeled himself before nodding. “Alright, what have we already tried? Draw me the schematics of any device I might have invented to fix your situation. Whom have we approached? Do not leave anything out.”

“Um,” Percy hesitated. “No device. And like I said, The Oracle of Delphi and Apollo are the only ones, other than you, that I’ve approached.” 

Daedalus’ fingers were slow when they returned to tinkering with the item on the table in front of him. “I didn’t suggest anyone else? In all these lives?”

Percy bit his lip.

Daedalus gathered his own answer from the silence. “The wings didn’t work, did they? The Sea God, the Sun Titan, the King of the Gods – you died during the flight. At least thrice.”

Percy swallowed. He had. How was he supposed to deny it?

Daedalus staggered, leaning on the table for support. “I will … fix this,” he promised after a few minutes of breathing unsteadily. “Whatever person is taking such delight in making you suffer, I promise, I will stop them.”

Percy’s breath escaped in a mirthless huff. “I don’t think you can,” he said softly. “I think I’m the only one who can ever do that. And even that’s doubtful.”

“I am your father!” Daedalus burst out. “If you think I will leave this to you to solve, you are mistaken. Now, what did the Oracle say?”

Percy stared in stupefaction at the man. He’d never before met an adult so intent on not letting him combat the mythological on his own. Certainly, he knew that if his mother could, she would have wrapped him in bubble wrap and protected him from everything.

But it was beyond her capabilities, and the woman was wise enough to understand attempting it anyway would just put him in even more danger. Same for actively helping him fight his battles.

Chiron – was a different type of adult. He’d help – but he also expected demigods to handle most of their problems on their own. And die doing so.

The less said about any god, the better.

And here Daedalus was – old, hurt, already cursed – but determined to not let the boy he perceived as his son risk his life even despite knowing death was anything but permanent.

Percy found himself wishing someone would do the same for him.

Then he shook his head. What was he on about? He had people willing to risk their lives just to accompany him. That’s what every single demigod at Camp Half-Blood was. Even Clarisse, once she got her head out of her ass, would be one of them.

Once again, Percy recited his prophecy. And then added the irregularity in the strings of Fate Apollo had mentioned, as well as his ignorance about what it actually meant.

Daedalus nodded. “We can be very clear about the mechanism – your soul itself is making the journey. Which means your string must get constantly cut and spun together again. That must be what Lord Apollon saw. It is also a hint – whoever did it, is not as powerful as the Fates if their work still recognises the irregularity.”

“Shouldn’t it be the opposite?” Percy inquired. “It can affect their weaving and destroy a prophecy already in the works.”

Daedalus frowned. “Not really. Perhaps on similar levels, but if this person were stronger than the Fates, then Lord Apollon wouldn’t have seen anything strange at all.”

“Maybe he made it up?” Percy offered. “Or maybe it really is the fact that I am the subject of a Prophecy that he can see – a prophecy not in his memory.”

Daedalus heaved a sigh. “It’s clear what I need to make. Something to reveal your soul – and your string.”

“My soul?” Percy asked with trepidation.

Daedalus looked at him in exasperation. “Your soul a swinging door into yesterday, Icarus. Your soul is how you are travelling – we must make something to see souls. Compare yours with someone else’s. And analyse the differences.”

Percy swallowed. “Ah. Right.”

He was pretty sure that was not what the line meant. Percy’s soul had been catapulted into the past – he was, at best, a ghost possessing Icarus.

Still. This was better than Percy’s idea of going around screaming Chronos’s name until the guy popped up out of the ether.

*** 

The next few months were filled with experimentation – sometimes painful, often mechanical, seldom arcane.

Then one day, Daedalus set his latest invention on the ground, instructed Percy to lie down, and switched it on. (The source of power was apparently water from the Styx. Talk about déjà vu).

Percy stared up at the brick ceiling, quite certain that this would be just another dud.

But then, with a surprised elation that revealed Daedalus’ own reservations, the inventor whisper-shouted, “It worked!”

Chapter Text

Percy lifted his head up in startlement at Daedalus’ pronouncement but failed to see anything.

Which made sense.

Daedalus had crafted what appeared to almost be a bubble wand, except, instead of an empty circle, a circular sheet of flattened bronze formed the head. The wand itself was attached to a boxlike machine – the intricate details of which Percy had been forced to memorise despite understanding barely a hundredth of it.

At the moment, Daedalus’ eyes were fixed on the bronze sheet he was using as a mirror to look at Percy’s recumbent body.

“What do you see?” Percy asked excitedly. Despite all his apprehensions, he couldn’t help his curiosity.

With a furrow on his brow, the inventor ran the wand along the length of Percy’s body before sitting back on his heels. “There is an almost pearlescent overlay over you.”

“Could that be the bronze?”

Daedalus shook his head. “No. The animus of a demigod is supposed to look like this. It is proof of our divine ancestry. But the sheen is … strange. I do not believe a regular animus shines quite so brightly.”

Percy blamed his ADHD for his next thought. It was better than believing that a part of him would rather pick faults in reality instead of simply accepting that his demigod status was one carved into his very soul. He wasn’t certain why, but that thought was disconcerting in a manner that made him wish to flee. That someone else could lay such a claim on him had something hot and angry clenching inside Percy.

No, much better to focus on something innocuous – such as the fact that the word animus was Latin! How did Daedalus know a word spoken in a language common only in some tiny part of Italy, if that? Or was this one of those shared words in the region?

But words for the soul in both Greek and Latin were derived from breath – which Percy was quite certain differed in the two languages.

Incredulously, Percy wondered if perhaps Latin was a secret language practiced by Ares and Aphrodite that they had imparted to Romulus, Remus, and Aeneas. Perhaps, Daedalus had simply been privy to a few illicit conversations he should have maintained a vast distance from – and come away with a healthy knowledge of the human soul.

But Percy had learned from bitter experience to not interrogate people on the vagaries of language. Instead, he almost asked Daedalus about the source of his certainty regarding the animus before memory struck him like a lightning bolt.

This was the same person who would go on to transfer his soul to an automaton. Multiple times.

With a shudder of revulsion, Percy realised that the rudimentary plans for the device must have been Perdix’s, Daedalus’ nephew. Perdix must have been the one to create the initial device. Perdix must have been the one to share some of the schematics for the device with Daedalus, perhaps for review.

And Daedalus had killed his nephew for it.

It had taken multiple attempts to create a working prototype not because Daedalus was building something from scratch, but because he was building off of incomplete knowledge gleaned off a dead boy.

Eager to get his mind off the disturbing thought, Percy queried, “Did you see anything wrong?”

Daedalus looked anxious when he spoke, “I will have to compare it to other people. See how the machine reflects different individuals.”

“So, there is a part that doesn’t look like the rest,” Percy answered his own question.

Daedalus grimaced. Under the light from the oil lamps and the dim glow of the celestial bronze machines on the walls, he looked like a steampunk mechanic about to announce that no, he could not fix his customer’s clockwork heart.

“There is a certain … smudge,” Daedalus reluctantly replied. “Over your heart. It seems to be constricting your animus. But whether that is what is sending you back every time or is just a reflection of the connection between body and soul, I cannot say.”

“There’s more,” Percy guessed.

“You said you died suddenly, for no discernible reason,” Daedalus noted grimly. “The smudge could be a sign of the multiple deaths leaving a permanent mark on your animus – one that interferes with your regular life.”

Percy ran his eyes intently over the inventor, trying to ascertain if Daedalus was hiding something. But while those grey eyes were dark aplenty, it didn’t appear to originate from subterfuge.

Percy let his lids slide close, taking refuge in the darkness even as his mind whirred through the possibilities.

The smudge could be Percy piggybacking off Icarus, he knew. But Percy wasn’t some passenger in another person’s body – after a little bit of adjustment to the longer reach, more muscles yet conversely less strength, and seeing a stranger’s face in his reflection, Percy had made this body his own.

If his animus were merely restricted to the heart, how could that be? Even a parasite in the brain couldn’t suddenly make the legs break into a run. Cause behavioural changes, yes. But not the full control Percy possessed. Then how could the equivalent of a heart infection?

This machine might have detected something, but the smudge could just as well be an indication of the fact that Icarus had passed on the moment Percy appeared in this body. In which case – wasn’t this machine a bust?

Percy got up.

Daedalus was still ruminating over the matter. “I think it’s time we brought in someone more well versed with the soul.”

Percy quirked an eyebrow. “Like whom? Psyche? I don’t think she’s been born yet.”

Daedalus glared at him censoriously. “This is not a matter for japes, Icarus. I might learn some things by testing the Animus Revealer on other people and noting down the results but interpreting them is something that will require a priest from one of the Chthonic temples.”

“Hermes,” Percy burst out, instead of dwelling upon the act that he seemed to be living in some weird offshoot of Assassin’s Creed. Except, instead of being the assassin, he was the one constantly being killed.

Somehow, he didn’t think having Hades learn about him so soon would be a good thing.

Daedalus nodded his head slowly. “Lord Hermes has always been one of the gods most likely to help mortals. And one of his domains is ferrying souls to the Underworld. Someone from his temple might indeed be well-versed in deciphering a soul’s condition.”

“So,” Percy waffled before just going for it. “Can I go now?”

A suspicious look Percy had last seen on his mother’s face took over Daedalus’ features. “And what exactly are you planning to do once you leave?” the inventor asked sceptically.

“Just, walking,” Percy answered. Then, with a stroke of inspiration, added, “Aelia wanted to visit the sea and catch some glowing fish.”

Daedalus pursed his lips. “While I am glad that you and the princess have taken to each other so much, I do not feel that traipsing along the shore at night is the best idea.”

“We’ll take guards,” Percy cajoled.

“My worry is more about the multiple times you’ve died in the sea!” Daedalus shot back.

 “I’m not going to let that frighten me off the ocean,” Percy stated forcefully.

“Poseidon hates Athena,” Daedalus insisted. “Icarus, it is not a surprise that he has never answered your pleas. Any other god might have, if only because you flew through the sky. But not the ruler of the seas.”

“I’m not saying I’ll go take a dip,” Percy argued passionately, unwilling to give up even though he’d had no plans to actually visit the waters. “But I refuse to let this time loop ruin the seas for me.”

He refused to let the sight of those glittering waters put him off what he’d once loved. Water was his source of strength, his father one of his staunchest divine allies. How could he let the way Poseidon treated Icarus affect his feelings for the god?

After all, Odysseus had been buffeted across the seas for ten years for blinding Polyphemus, even though it was self-defence. Poseidon had vouched for Percy in front of all the gods despite harming Polyphemus and killing Crusty, the owner of the killer waterbeds.

The way a parent treated a child was naturally different from how a god treated an antagonist.

Large bodies of water still sent a river of cold sweat running down his back.

***

“Is there a particular reason we are out on an excursion in the evening?” Aelia inquired dubiously even as they walked down the dirt road to the port.

“How do you intend to watch luminescent fish during daytime?” Percy asked rhetorically, trying to conceal his true intentions.

She shot him a sharp glare. “Do not lie to me. If that were your only objective, you wouldn’t be so desperate.”

“Should we turn back, princess?” Cephalus, the head of Aelia’s guard, asked in concern.

Aelia raised an eyebrow at Percy, resembling Annabeth so much that Percy instinctively found himself admitting, “I wanted to get away from the workshop. And father wanted to know where I intended to go.”

That simple admission sent tension seeping out of both princess and guard.

“I wasn’t leading you into a trap or anything,” Percy protested. “And honestly, if that was a concern, why would you come anyway?”

“It’s not as if we truly believed you to have nefarious intentions,” Aelia stated defensively. “You were just being … suspicious.”

“Nefarious, huh?” Percy echoed, unimpressed. “From now on, I’ll try to keep my nefarious plans away from you – no need to entertain a princess who has no faith in me, right?”

“Icarus!” Aelia whined.

Percy relented. “Fine, fine. Now tell me – where did you say your fish come to visit?”

“Near the port,” was the prompt answer.

“Yes, but where exactly near it?” Percy pressed patiently.

Aelia stared back in blank incomprehension.

Percy sighed before leading them away from the road that led to the port itself.

Selene driving her chariot across the night sky, along with the innumerable stars invisible in his time due to light pollution, were enough to illuminate their path. Even then, Melissa, one of Aelia’s handmaidens who had accompanied them, carried a lit lantern – none of them willing to risk the princess tripping on a stone and breaking her neck,

The winding path Percy took led them through pebbled tracks to grassy patches, and ultimately culminated on a sandy stretch of the shore.

“We’re away from the port though,” Aelia protested.

“Fish aren’t likely to travel between ships and fling themselves over the dock for you to gawk at,” Percy explained, amused once again at the princess’s lack of knowledge about some basics even he knew. “They prefer to surface in undisturbed waters.”

Aelia pouted before running over to the edge of the shore. “I suppose this is as good a place as any. And if we fail to spot anything tonight, we can just come back.”

“Your father would not be pleased were this to become a regular occurrence, princess,” Melissa cautioned, the young woman’s face aglow with both fire-light and fear.

Aelia turned back to retort something, caught sight of her handmaiden’s expression, and paused. In a more subdued manner, she relented, “Every few days, I suppose.”

Relieved, Percy spread out the sheet he’d carried and placed the basket containing foodstuffs on it. Once everyone was settled with a good view of the sea, however, Percy had nothing else to divert his attention from the waves peacefully beating against the sand.

Conversely, the darkness helped. He’d always died in bright sunlight – the Moon tricked his mind into considering itself safe.

But he’d take the reassurance, however faulty. The sway of the water, the way the waves seemed to almost dance in joy at his presence – it was all a return to a previous life when even the worst problems were still bearable.

Percy shook his head, hoping to shake off the despondency along with it. What was this fatalism? Nothing was insurmountable. He’d rescued his mother from the Underworld once – and he was supposed to believe that he couldn’t return to his own time? He’d borne the weight of the sky and not crumpled. Even now, while he might not sport the streak of white as a memento, he still bore the weight of it in his soul.

“Are the waves supposed to be so calm?” Aelia asked hesitantly. “Shouldn’t they be increasing in size with the tide?”

It was a testament to his terrible luck of late that the first thought in Percy’s mind was a tsunami. Fortunately, calm didn’t mean receding. Percy heaved a sigh of relief before focusing on the unnatural event taking place.

“Maybe the Sea God is having a pleasant day?” Cephalus suggested, even while ushering his charges up. Anything supernatural was something to be avoided as swiftly as possible.

“Sorry we didn’t get to see your fish,” Percy apologised just as Aelia cried out, “There’s a boat out there! And it’s in trouble!”

Peering out into the night, Percy spotted the sailing boat being buffeted about by the waves. The reason they had such a calm sea in front of them, Percy realised, was because all the turbulence was directed at the vessel in front of them.

“Can’t we help?” Aelia asked uneasily.

Silently, Percy shook his head. Had he still had his water-based powers, Percy wouldn’t have hesitated to help – indeed, he wouldn’t have needed to do much more than step into the water.

“We can pray to Lord Poseidon,” Melissa offered, “but we must be very careful not to bring down his rage on ourselves.”

Resolute, Aelia knelt on the sand, clasped her hands together, and bowed her head before saying, “Oh lord Poseidon, all-powerful lord of the seas. Please, if these sailors have not committed some unpardonable offense, accept this plea from a humble princess to forgive them instead. We promise to sacrifice a bull to honour your benevolence were you to have mercy.”

Poseidon must have accepted, for after a pause fraught with tension, the waves returned to their regularly scheduled havoc instead of ganging up on a particular piece of flotsam.

The boat, however, continued to bob unsteadily right where it was.

“I don’t think they’re well,” Cephalus commented uneasily, eyes fixed on the dark shape backlit by moonlight. “And I’m not about to risk our lives for someone who has offended a god.”

Percy grimaced, itching to jump into the sea and tug the boat back with his own hands if required. But cowardice stuck his feet to the sand he stood on.

Aelia looked between the two men on the beach with her before scowling furiously. “Fine, since you two are so willing to abandon our people, I’ll act.”

“Not into the water!” Melissa protested.

Aelia shook her head tersely. “Oh Phoebus Apollon, bringer of light and protector of sailors,” she cried out loudly, “please, if you will it, aid those lost sailors in returning to land after an arduous journey.”

Percy jumped, certain that the world must be conspiring against him. How else could the life he refused to have anything to do with Apollo be the one where his companions summoned the god?

Even if Apollo heard, Percy tried to console himself, his response wouldn’t be more than a breeze to push the boat ashore.

Indeed, that was what happened.

A sudden wind blew the boat towards them until it ran aground.

Once within reach, Percy finally managed to channel his desperate desire to help into something his limbs could utilise. Bursting with energy and nerves both, Percy ran towards the wooden sailboat and climbed aboard.

As expected, the two people within were unconscious – the only thing preventing them from being tossed overboard being the ropes tying them to the mast.

With a speed that could only come from experience, Percy untied the two, brought them off the boat, and together with Cephalus, carried them to the nearest house.

It was only once the two sailors were ensconced within pallets laid out on the floor of the fisherman’s house that Aelia tugged at the bottom of Percy’s tunic.

“I am so sorry, Icarus,” she mumbled.

Percy turned back in surprise. “For rescuing these people when all we did was watch?”

Remorse bringing tears to her eyes, Aelia shook her head. “They bore the symbol of Crete, Icarus. I saved the lives of the people hunting you and your father.”      

Chapter Text

Exhausted, irritated, frustrated, and strangely antsy, Percy flopped down onto his rump. His arms burned, his eyes stung with sweat, and his lungs ached with the effort of drawing in air.

Yet, when a warrior stepped up to him and asked, “Will you have a bout with me?”, Percy shot up to his feet with alacrity.

“Yes,” he cried out with perhaps a bit more desperation than was seemly.

Being stuck inside either Daedalus’ workshop or Aelia’s portion of the palace to evade notice by Minos' soldiers had grown old within a day. Impervious to Percy’s frustrations, however, his life remained trapped within the same interminable moratorium.

Out of desperation, Percy had pulled on a helmet. With all but his eyes and jaw covered, Percy was ready to roll into the training arena like a particularly proud yet cowardly warrior. All he needed was padding all around to cement the impression.

It hadn’t stopped him from challenging and beating every single warrior willing to engage him. And from being disappointed at the very easy capitulation they offered. Percy’s sweat and exhaustion were more from the protracted nature of his exertion than any complexity of the bouts.

At this point, most were unwilling to fight the mysterious stranger who’d landed in their vicinity – especially given the similarity of his moves to Icarus’s.

So, perhaps, Percy had made something of a name for himself as a devil in the fields within a few hours. The fact that anyone here was still willing to spar with him at all was enough to have eagerly bouncing on his feet.

The young man before him was either in his late teens or early twenties, with the shaved look so popular among the youth of this time. His tanned skin gleamed in the sunlight despite the lack of any sweat, and he possessed golden curls rarely seen in this kingdom.

Percy assessed the deceptively lean frame. Given the muscles and calluses – probably an archer? But not one unused to wielding a sword with the way he held one.

When Percy met the warrior’s eyes, electric blue orbs twinkled at him in a confident, mocking manner.

Percy smirked back. He was going to wipe the arrogance off this man’s face.

What followed next was the best fight of his life.

It didn’t take long for Percy to understand that while his opponent might be arrogant, it was for good reason. Percy only felt like he had the upper hand for the first minute. Slowly but steadily, the other man struck faster and with more complex motions, as if gauging Percy’s skills and levelling up accordingly.

Eyes narrowed, Percy stepped up accordingly, unleashing all the divine strength and speed he possessed in the body of a goddess’s legacy.

With an infuriating smirk, the man dodged Percy’s swing, kicked aside the leg Percy stretched out in an effort to trip him up, and jabbed Percy in the side with the hilt of his blade.

Percy winced, ribs throbbing, before twisting out of strike range.

“You’re good,” the man complimented, before flashing gleaming white teeth at him. “I’m better.”

“You’re playing with me,” Percy accused – incensed and entertained in equal measure.

“Am I?” the man inquired playfully before lunging forward and putting an end to the small break.

Percy found it increasingly harder to keep up with the rapid-fire strikes, each of which landed on his blade and shield with bone-breaking force. Competitiveness and the thrill of a food fight with no adverse consequences except for a slight ribbing, though, had him pushing through. It helped that the adrenaline coursing through his veins blunted the pain of the blows.

Every time Percy seemed on the brink of losing altogether, the subtly laughing man would hit him with the hilt of his blade, his hand in a knife-cut, or the back of his leather vambrace before retreating.

And panting, vision increasingly focused and brain whirring with all sorts of tricky manoeuvres, Percy would leap ahead.

Ultimately, the end of the spar was anticlimactic.

Percy caught the man’s blade on his own upraised, nicked sword. The man smirked before increasingly the force he’d brought to bear.

Tremors shook Percy’s fatigued arms as he was forced to use both hands to avoid getting his chest cleaved open.

The man’s abdomen flexed as he put his core into the action.

And Percy’s arms buckled.

The man withdrew instantly, his sword not even coming close to slicing through Percy’s skin.

“Give me a minute,” Percy gasped out through the constriction of his helmet while massaging his aching arms.

The man laughed. “Wisdom is in accepting defeat when faced with a superior foe.”

Percy peered up at the man, simply taking in the way he practically shone in the sunlight. Softly, Percy asked, “And are you a foe?”

There was something slightly menacing in the grin the man shot back. “Perhaps I’m merely an undecided observer,” he mocked.

Now that Percy was finally calm enough to examine the incongruity of being faced with such a competent warrior in out of the way Sicily, he found it difficult to understand how he could have possibly mistaken the man as anything but what he was.

He stood up on wobbly legs and offered, “Would you like to retire for refreshments with me?”

One single golden eyebrow went up, a strange glint entering those mercurial eyes, before the man agreed cordially. “Certainly. Something to whet my throat is the least you can offer after the lesson I have provided.”

Percy snorted, before inquiring, “What’s your name? Never asked.”

The man continued to inspect him with disconcerting eyes as Percy gathered up his discarded shield, waterskin, and then led the way out of the arena full of gaping souls.

His sparring partner’s stare was just one more thing to be added to the list of discomforts heaped upon Percy’s shoulders in this time.

Not being completely insensitive to the dangers of what he was doing, Percy only led the stranger to the herb garden in front of the kitchen.

“Planning to feed me grass, are you?” the man commented.

“Wait a minute,” Percy instructed before hurrying inside and begging off some bread, honey-water, and wild berries from the cooks.

When Percy returned, he found the man lounging on the patch of grass just behind the plants like he owned it.

Percy paused, momentarily taken aback by the picturesque quality of the scene, before dismissing it as the guy’s natural vanity coming to the fore. Of course, he would pose.

Percy sat down beside the man before handing him half the share of his bounty. “So, your name?”

Then, unable to resist referring to a moment that existed only in his memory, Percy joked, “If I get your name wrong, it’s no one’s fault but your own.”

“Never underestimate people’s ability to divest blame onto everyone but themselves,” the man advised sagely before answering, “Apollodorus.”

Percy resisted the urge to snort, though the impish, self-congratulatory look on the guy’s face made it hard.

Conscious of all the extraneous consonants passing his lips, Percy said, “Apollodorus, huh? Are you meant to be a gift from Apollo for me?”

“You mean Apollon?” the man pointed out silkily.

Percy met blue eyes fearlessly. “What brings you here, Apollodorus?”

The bright gaze that ran all over his body threatened to sear Percy’s flesh.

“Curiosity, I suppose,” the man finally answered.

“About?”

The small, straggly tree under whose shade they sat shook in a sudden breeze before a single green leaf tore free. Fluttering in aimless circles for a few moments, the leaf ultimately decided to alight on Apollodorus’ head – where it resembled the beginnings of a crown instead of the clutter it should have been.

“You are a strange person, Icarus,” the man deigned to respond after about a minute of silence.   

Percy sucked in a breath, finding it beyond the pale that the one time he had done his best to assimilate into the past was the one in which he was being called out on his oddities.

“How so,” Percy challenged. Beneath the aggravation, however, lay a desire to identify his mistakes and correct them. There were some objectives that could only be achieved by convincing everyone he was Icarus – and answering to that detested name was only step one.

“You let those sailors live – even after you knew their provenance and their purpose,” Apollodorus said.

Percy frowned, not having expected that grievance to be the one selected from a list the size of the Empire State Building.

“What else was I supposed to do?” he asked in confusion. “Kill them?”

Certainly, Daedalus had been determined upon that very outcome the moment the inventor heard of the arrival of soldiers from Crete, but Percy was not yet so cold-hearted. How could he kill those men for simply following the orders of their superior, however evil their commander might be?

“Oh?” Apollodorus inquired. “You certainly haven’t hesitated before. The tang of death lingers around you.”

A fleeting smile stole onto the god’s face that did nothing to calm the sudden thundering in Percy’s ears.

“Some might even say that you are a vision of destruction.” 

“Like you?” Percy challenged, feeling attacked. “Apollon, from apollymi?”

Instead of being offended, the god threw back his head and laughed. “No one has ever dared ascribe that origin to my name before,” Apollo chortled.

Really? Percy found it hard to believe considering the destruction gods left in their wake.

Now that the need for deception had passed, Apollo showed no hesitance in transforming his plain white tunic into a saffron-dyed chiton that placed one brown nipple directly in Percy’s view. The tunic was so short that it even bared Apollo’s legs to mid-thigh.

Percy drew back, uncomfortably certain that the suddenly revealing outfit was for his benefit. The god had a goal in mind – and Apollo believed he could capitalize on his attractive physique to achieve whatever it was.

“You are very daring for a boy condemned to death as a child,” Apollo told him.

“Why do you say that?” Percy demanded uneasily. “Condemned to death?”

Cruel delight lit up the god’s eyes even as he crooned sympathetically, “You were a punishment from your grandmother, Icarus. Athena looked at your father and decided he needed to suffer the death of a beloved son just as his sister suffered the death of hers. Naturally, that required a child to be born – only to be sacrificed.”

“You,” Apollo added at Percy’s continued silence, as if the demigod hadn’t realised the depths of the gods’ viciousness.

Percy’s chest rose and fell with the motion of the waves as he tried to expel horror, fury, and pity with his slow exhalations.

“If I am meant to die anyway,” he finally asked, “what use is trembling in fear of an incontestable fate?”

“Is it incontestable though?” Apollo leaned in closer as he spoke, honey-scented breath wafting over Percy’s face. “You seem to have sidestepped the most fatal occurrences already.”

“Oh?” Percy questioned unsteadily, uncomfortable at the sudden proximity.

The heat radiating from the god’s body had the sweat glands on Percy’s skin that had barely slowed down production ramping into overdrive again. If only this were winter, Percy found himself thinking illogically. This degree of warmth would be downright pleasant in a New York winter.

The realisation that he might never see his city dressed in white ever gain, even were he to make it back home, almost had him missing Apollo’s next words.

Almost.

Apollo nodded. “There is something quite intriguing about you,” Apollo confided.

“Because my thread’s already been cut?” he asked tonelessly.

Blue eyes narrowed in scrutiny. “Is that what you’ve been told?”

“Isn’t that what you meant?” Percy shot back instead of admitting his lack of knowledge.

“You don’t know,” Apollo realised, drawing back in disappointment.

“But there is something,” Percy guessed. “Something strange enough that you’ve arrived to interrogate me even without my doing anything to draw your attention in particular.”

Something clear to Apollo, but not to Poseidon when Percy was dying in his embrace. Something that Athena, clearly the ideal all loving grandmothers should aspire to, had failed to recognise even while plotting his death.

“You can always see the threads of Fate,” Percy thought out loud, mind racing a million miles a minute. “It’s not my snapped thread that concerns you – and you haven’t brought up any particular prophecy that might be entangling my threads, so that’s not the problem either.”    

Percy stared at the suddenly wary god.

“Is it incontestable though?” Percy echoed.

There was a silver mist that hovered over Percy’s body – hovered, not draped.

“The threads don’t touch me, do they?” Percy understood, cold triumph burning inside his stomach.

“That’s why you’re here. The Fates wove me a shroud – except it refuses to touch me.”

Chapter Text

Apollo chuckled, but there was something almost nervous in his voice. “What conceit. A mortal untouched by Fate? What do you consider yourself? A primordial?”

Percy swallowed, taking in the wariness hidden beneath the bluster almost rapturously.

“That’s how you knew,” the demigod reasoned. “You deliberately repeated those words the first time you saw me as a hint – whatever happened has left a visible trace on my soul that you can see.”

“I have never met you before,” Apollo denied.

“And I told you that explanations were futile because you have the memory of a goldfish,” Percy retorted. “Am I right or am I right?”

“The temerity!” Apollo exclaimed, gaping.

Percy laughed exultantly, a tension he hadn’t even been aware of seeping out of him. The blue skies were unmarred by a single cloud, the herbs in the garden released a spicy scent that sent hunger roaring through his stomach, and the breeze was delightful.

He got up to his knees and grasped Apollo’s hands.

“You don’t have to remember,” Percy beamed. “You can see the error in the system I throw up, and you’re curious enough to come looking. All that remains is to tell you about my past. You’re the God of Truth – you can tell when I’m telling the truth.”

Apollo stared at the fingers a few shades lighter than his holding his hands so desperately. It took him a few seconds before he managed to rebut, “You could just be,”

“Crazy, yes,” Percy interrupted. “But what do you know? You also happen to be the God of Healing – who better to detect whether there is any actual abnormality in my brain, or I am simply spouting facts unknown to you?”

“That’s wonderful for you,” the god conceded uneasily. “But perhaps you could elaborate on just what it is that I apparently forget on a regular basis yet remember enough to make subconscious allusions to.”

Percy sat back with his legs tucked underneath, unsure how to explain events to someone who might actually remember his words. Somehow, over the course of just a few loops, Percy had fallen into the abysmal type of optimism where everything was bearable because things would revert back to zero.

Being confronted now with the prospect of his actions having consequences was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. Especially because he couldn’t help fearing that all his assumptions were faulty hypotheses.

He couldn’t quite invest himself into providing a proper explanation. Somehow, it felt like setting himself up for disappointment. As if, the moment he expressed any willingness to entertain Apollo’s curiosity – the god would be the one to get struck on the head and develop spontaneous amnesia.

He didn’t want to believe and then be disappointed.   

Percy scrunched his eyes shut, squeezed the hands still within his grasp tighter, and then started speaking. He could only push out halting whispers at first, but soon enough, words poured out like a waterfall rejuvenated by rainfall.

Once he finished revealing the entire convoluted yarn, however, Percy found it difficult to meet the god’s eyes.

He was not worried about being disbelieved, Percy told himself.

It was still a throwback Thursday – to all the times he’d told the truth to some authority figure and been labelled a liar if not altogether ignored.

“You do realise,” Apollo began delicately, “that the only reason I am still here is because you are entertaining. You are either mad or spinning a delightful yarn. Either way, I don’t actually believe you.”

“So?” Percy rejointed, a contrary kernel burning in his core and setting his temper alight. “As long as you’re still here, right?”

Forget convincing Apollo of his truthfulness – Percy was going to harness the god’s curiosity and inherent lack of a sense of self-preservation and use him for all he was worth.

The god blinked in befuddlement. “That is a very novel way of looking at things.”

Not really, Percy thought in the safety of his mind. You’re just old.

The god’s eyes blazed into infernos. “Why don’t you speak to your father instead?” he snapped.

“I have,” Percy replied, unimpressed. “Hasn’t worked.”

“I meant the god you consider your father in your imagination,” Apollo corrected, unimpressed.

It took a moment to parse through the words before the demigod understood the horrifying reality of having instinctively considered Daedalus his father.

But it was easier.

Easier to look at Daedalus as the old inventor laboured tirelessly for Percy’s sake than the heartless waves Percy had died in.

Even the fact that Poseidon had tried to drown the soldiers searching for Daedalus couldn’t be taken as an attempt to answer Percy’s prayers – if the god would capitulate in the face of a simple bull, what was his love worth?  

Percy breathed in deeply and then exhaled the air in a gust.

The betrayal – still hurt.

“I tried,” he said, bitterness seeping in despite his best efforts. “Thrice. He didn’t even bother responding with a voice mail saying, ‘Busy, come back later’. Fact of the matter is, you’re the only one who’s bothered to show up.”

Apollo tilted his head, glee lighting up his face until it grew easy to see why he was called bright.

“Do you mean to say,” the god enthused, “that I am your only hope, your only chance at salvation, your only harbour in a storm?”

Percy twitched as Apollo squeezed the demigod’s hands in a vicelike grip.

“I wouldn’t go that far, man, but … sure,” he said reluctantly.

Apollo beamed. “I like it,” he announced. “Being your only light in the darkness. This is an endeavour fit to be included in my lore.”

Percy stared at the god in disbelief, baffled at the sudden change of heart.

“What happened to ‘You’re mad’, ‘Mind your tongue or you’ll find yourself without one’, and ‘Your suffering is the only sacrifice I am willing to accept’?” Percy protested.

Apollo chortled. “You are mad. I am a god of healing, Icarus, who prefers to go by Percy. As you said, if even I started blaming you for the comments you make while in the throes of your illness, where would you be?”

Percy narrowed his eyes. He was pretty certain that this consideration had not been extended towards Hercules when the hero inadvertently murdered his family after being driven mad. Hercules had been the one forced to perform the twelve labours, not Hera.

But then again, Percy had yet to get any gods against him. That Apollo knew of.

Best to take advantage while he could.

“How do I convince you to help me next time as well?” Percy asked brusquely. “This constant doubting of my word is pretty disheartening. I’m delicate – I might just stop approaching you altogether if you were to reject me even once.” 

Apollo’s lips twitched, as if struggling not to make a derogatory remark. When he spoke, however, his words were just as cordial as they were cryptic. “Have you met Pan yet this time?”

“Pan?” Percy repeated in confusion. “No. I’ve only ever met him once – the first time.”

Triumph glittered in the god’s eyes. Smug satisfaction oozing out of his pores, Apollo took off one of his many bracelets and slipped it onto Percy’s hand.

“Here,” Apollo instructed. “Show this to me and I’ll know you have gained my favour in addition to being something.”

Percy shook his head mock-sadly. “You don’t actually understand how time travel works, do you?” he lamented. “I don’t travel with a body. This one isn’t even mine. My mind just finds itself back in the past with no effects in the exact same situation, wearing the same accoutrements this body was garbed in at the time.”

Apollo flicked him on the forehead.

Percy rubbed his head, startled at the playful gesture and not the smiting he half-expected.

“Who’s the god here?” Apollo scolded. “Have some faith. I said I’d recognise the mark, and I will.”

And somehow, despite his reservations, Percy found himself believing the god. Even when Apollo retired in a burst of light – ostensibly to formulate some plan, but in reality, to ruminate over the revelations – a deep-seated pillar of faith remained.     

It made things so much easier to accept when Percy tripped down the stairs in his hurry to reach Daedalus’ workshop. His last thought before his vision darkened into the inky blackness of death was that the Universe could have at least waited for Percy to find out just what exciting new discovery the inventor had wanted to discuss.

***   

There was a considering silence before Daedalus instructed, “Sketch out the schematics of the device to inspect the animus.”

The mistrust and suspicion in the old man’s voice should not have been as cutting as it was. The strangest thing was, Percy had no idea what he had done to engender such a markedly different reception compared to the previous time.

Nonetheless, Percy took the charcoal stick and sketched out the device. Before Percy was even halfway done, Daedalus was crouched next to the clay tablet Percy was using the back of as a canvas. “That’s not where those …” he started to scold before pausing.

“Icarus – just how did you come by these sketches?”

Percy shot a disbelieving glance at the inventor. “I just told you. You made this!”

Daedalus stared at Percy unblinkingly before collapsing onto his haunches, disregarding the dust in the empty room they had been given to transform into a workshop. “You’re telling the truth!” he mumbled out in shock.

“What convinced you?” Percy snarked back.

“The fact that these mechanisms don’t exist out of my head yet,” was Daedalus’ perplexed answer.

“Wait, did you think that I snuck into your secret sketches drawer and stole some ideas to corroborate an imaginary tale?” Percy asked incredulously.

At Daedalus’ chagrined look, Percy could only feel offense.

They were in the age of heroes, where women gave birth to swan eggs, constellations were just spirits the gods were obsessed with, and certain condiments were yet to be created from the remnants of tragic lives.

And Daedalus found it difficult to believe that Percy might have been thrust into a time-travel odyssey due to the machinations of a malicious god?

“It is such a fantastical tale, Icarus,” Daedalus said defensively. “Wouldn’t it be stranger if I believed you instantly?”

You’re supposed to trust me unconditionally, Percy almost retorted before stopping in his tracks.

Dedalus wasn’t supposed to do any such thing with Percy – all his affections and trust were reserved for his own son. It stood to reason that the inventor wouldn’t believe Percy’s words when every fibre of his being screamed that this was an interloper in his son’s body.

“Of course,” he said tersely. “It’s difficult.”

Daedalus narrowed his eyes in consternation at the odd tone, but Percy wasn’t up to explaining. Instead, he returned to completely the sketch of the Animus Revealer, however meaningless it might be.

“Icarus,” Daedalus broached hesitantly, only for Percy to shake his head violently.

He wasn’t up to discussing the vagaries of his own erratic emotions – and especially why he continued drawing the schematics when Apollo had already clarified the point that had prompted them to create this device.

A warm hand fell on his shoulder, stilling his hand. “I’m sorry son,” the old man told him. “This suspicious nature of mine – it has always been a trial. But I would never deliberately hurt you for anything in the world. I would die for you, if that is what it takes to prevent even one more death of yours.”

“But it wouldn’t be permanent,” Percy protested.

While Percy’s death would never stick, he had yet to figure out whether that was the case for everyone in existence. What if the world simply continued on after his death, just with an Icarus-shaped absence in its fabric? Wouldn’t that mean all the deaths that occurred were debts incurred by Percy’s soul?

Daedalus’ eyes were solemn. Kind. Terrifying.

“I am your father, Icarus. I would always sacrifice myself to extend your life – even if it were for only one breath more.”

Percy opened his mouth, but it did nothing to ease his breathing. His chest throbbed, but air refused to either enter or exit his lungs – epiglottis firmly slammed shut in an effort to prevent any unwanted emotions leaking through.

Unable to take it anymore, Percy bolted out of the chamber.

“Icarus!”

The shout behind him only reminded Percy of the tormented cries the inventor had released whenever he’d witnessed Percy’s death.

Reminded him of the indifferent silence his own father had displayed instead.     

Chapter Text

Quite without knowing how, Percy found himself standing on the ramparts of the palace. He looked up at the sky, contemplating the celestial canvas the setting Sun was covering with a myriad hues of pink and red that ought to have been pretty.

Yet which only brought to mind blood and a fiery explosion that tore a ship apart.

Recovering even a vague semblance of composure was a herculean task – a funny thought when he wasn’t even certain the guy had been born yet.

The sentries keeping a sleepy watch for any threats side-eyed him. Percy tried to restrain it, but the flare of irritation at yet again having to prove himself, of having to gain enough trust to have most of the restrictions placed on him removed, could not be denied.

All of a sudden, exhaustion turned his limb leaden. He sat down and inspected his hands – the same overlarge hand with the marks of a blacksmith, not a warrior or school student.

Then he noticed his bare arms and huffed out a defeated laugh. Had he really expected a bracelet to make the journey through time simply because a young god had arrogantly declared it to be possible?

Percy closed his eye and tilted his head up, allowing the last rays the Sun to warm his skin.

Apollo. Apollon. Phoebus. Medicus. Delphinus. Pythian Apollo.

There was no response.

He raised his hands up in supplication, the weight of the absent bracelet shackles around his wrist. If he were to be disappointed, might as well get it all over now – perhaps that would leave his morrow open for optimism to sneak in like a phantom.

He couldn’t remember which names he called out – or even whether they were all relevant to the Apollon here. He wasn’t even certain whether he was addressing Apollo at all or just an amalgamation of all the deities playing with his life like it was a particularly squishy ball.

A warm hand grabbed his wrist in a firm grip.

Percy’s eyes snapped open to meet cerulean orbs framed by amber lashes.

“Am I still a curiosity to be fulfilled?” Percy asked bitterly. “A riddle to be solved to your satisfaction before you can traipse off into the sunset, never mind the ruins of my life?”

The fingers around his wrist tightened until his bones creaked in protest. Percy winced, raw inside to such an unprecedented degree that he found himself incapable of even pretending stoicism.

“Careful, dear,” Apollo warned. “Sating my curiosity can be as simple as destroying the person whose inner workings intrigue me.”

The god was dressed in a simple white silk chiton, though one that was clasped over both shoulders this time.

“Will I ever reach a point,” Percy wondered morbidly, “where I will irritate you solely so you put a permanent end to my existence? Will I reach a point where I will return to the Labyrinth, fifteen in body but fifty in mind and decide – forever fifteen is a terrible curse to bear when I am stuck within the same one year?”

Apollo stared unblinkingly at Percy. “You are a decidedly strange creature,” the god ultimately concluded, something unfocused in his eyes.

“Perhaps,” Percy conceded. “But we’re Greek. What else did you expect?”

“Why did you call for me?” the god demanded. He released Percy’s hand, which dropped limply into the demigod’s lap.

“Why did you answer?” Percy shot back resentfully. It wasn’t Apollo Percy had wanted to see. Out of all the people in the world Percy would give anything to see again, Apollo didn’t even qualify within the top ten.

And yet, he was the only one here.

Percy sniffed, glaring at the sandalled feet in front of him – struck by the intense urge to shove the god into the dry moat below.

“My questions take priority,” Apollo retorted.

Percy leaned forward until his forehead touched his ankles, uncaring of the subservient figure he presented. “I didn’t want you to come,” he mumbled miserably. “I wanted you to refuse.”

A foot-shaped pressure on the back of his neck had Percy yelping. He tried to pull the foot off with his hands, but all the demigod managed was fruitless scrabbling at an ankle.

“I do not appreciate being toyed with,” Apollo growled.

Percy moaned grouchily – his complaints muffled by the fact that his lips were being mushed against his own legs.

At some unseen cue (or maybe the god had simply grown bored of exhibiting his superior strength), Apollo withdrew his foot.

Percy instinctively sprang up to his feet, light-headed and tottering, but unwilling to leave himself open to any more of these sudden attacks.

“Is this what you meant by remembering me?” he shrieked.

Percy brandished his unadorned wrist at the god – treating it much as he would a weapon. “Wrap a bracelet around my wrist, say you’ll always recognise me, and the next instance try to break my neck in two? Your mark was supposed to be indelibly inked into my soul, wasn’t it?”

Apollo’s eyes flickered down to the blank wrist in question and then back up at Percy.

“So, it is,” he finally said.

Percy stared – the god’s words not computing until suddenly, they did with a jerk akin to an earthquake. “Wait, you mean you can actually see it?”

The god smirked. “You shouldn’t let people place objects on you without first finding out what they actually are,” he advised.

Argument apparently finished, Apollo flicked his hand and created two chairs before settling in one. At Percy’s bemused hesitance, Apollo quirked an eyebrow. “As long as you’re aware I won’t be rescuing you were you to take a tumble down the walls,” he said leadingly.

Percy glanced at the long stretch of empty rampart on either side of him – all the soldiers having seemingly disappeared from existence – and then at the delicately carved deer running from a hunt across the expanse of the wooden chair.

He sat down.

Apollo lounged on carelessly – head propped up on a palm resting along the top of the chair while one knee carelessly hung off the seat. “What precisely do you expect me to do?” he inquired. “Do you know the specific person meddling with my memories, or is that yet to be discovered?”       

Percy licked his lips as he pondered this sudden change in attitude. Why was Apollo being downright nice to him? Well, no, he corrected himself. Apollo had always been pleasant enough to Percy Jackson. It was Icarus who was subject to erratic temper tantrums.

“Chronos,” Percy finally said. And before the god could do more than stiffen, the demigod continued, “The God of Time. He locked me in a time loop. And you’ve … recognised that something’s wrong every single time we’ve met.”

“And how many times has that been?” Apollo inquired suspiciously.

“Every time but … thrice.” Percy scratched his head, taken aback by his own answer. Eager to move on, he hurried on, “And then I died. Only to have to repeat this altogether. And it’s not just you – no one remembers. As far as everyone but me is concerned, it’s all in my head.”

Then he looked at his hand, pushing past the disorientation he always experienced at the beginning of a loop, and attempted to detect whatever ghost of a bracelet lingered around the limb.

“But whatever mark your bracelet was – it’s still there, isn’t it?” he asked in a small voice.

As Apollo’s tentative nod, Percy pleaded, “If I can take things along, can’t I break free altogether?”

At the dawning grimace on the god’s face, Percy changed tracks, “Can you replicate it, instead? If not freedom, can’t I have company?”

“Someone to accompany you in these loops?” Apollo inquired, taken aback.

Percy paused. “No,” he finally answered, subdued. “That would be cruel. To wish my own fate on someone else just because I’m lonely.”

Apollo seemed to debate something internally, before stretching out a hand and gripping Percy’s chin gently. He twisted the demigod’s face this way and that before remarking, “You are still little more than a child. Yet to even dedicate your hair to me.”

Percy ran a self-conscious hand through the long locks he generally kept tied back in a ponytail. While not something he would have chosen for himself, Icarus’ haircut of choice wasn’t a chore to maintain. Though the idea of cutting his hair and giving it to Apollo to carry seemed … strange.

But if the god could tie a part of his own self around Percy, why couldn’t the demigod offer up something similar?

“If it will help you retain your memories of me, I’ll offer you my hair every single loop,” Percy promised.”

Apollo blinked a few times, face terribly stiff in a manner that indicated Percy might have misunderstood yet another more of ancient Greek life.

Apollo’s throat bobbed as he gulped before the god backed off. “I cannot guess why Chronos might subject you to such a protracted punishment. Letting you live out an entire life in your dreams with all its associated joys and sorrows before waking you to a reality that you’ve left behind? Yes. But nothing like what you describe. That is too dangerous. It might disturb the balance between Ananke and Chaos – and Chronos would not wish that.”

“He might not have minded after what happened to him,” Percy pointed out, eager to have his apparent misstep ignored. “I doubt anyone stuck recovering in Tartarus is that bothered about balance.”

“Tartarus?” Apollo asked incredulously. “What were you doing down there?”

Percy directed his gaze at the dark landscape. Only a few pinpricks of lantern light revealed the presence of any life – most of the kingdom accustomed to leading strictly diurnal lives.

The distraction wasn’t enough to make the internal recriminations any less severe. Even months later, he still couldn’t quite understand how it had all played out so disastrously.

“I wanted help fighting against Kronos – and someone whose domain was snatched by the Titan seemed as good a bet as any to provide it,” Percy finally answered.  

Apollo’s gaze bore holes into the side of Percy’s face, but the demigod couldn’t bring himself to face the god.

“The Crooked one,” Apollo picked through his words carefully, “is skilled at leading his enemies into actions that benefit him. He is also a master manipulator capable of sneaking into people’s heads. You might have believed yourself to be making the best decision under the circumstances – but once you fall into his web, you are trapped.”

“Like Chiron said,” Percy sighed in defeat. “I had no evidence that those two hadn’t joined hands while in Tartarus – a timeshare of sorts regarding their shared domain.”

Apollo opened his mouth, as if to ask a question, before shaking his head. “Perhaps. Though there is no reason for Chronos to collude with the Titan. Gods from all regions united to topple the Titans – Chronos knows that it is not just us he would have to fight were he to support the Crooked One.”

Then the god peered closer at Percy. “No,” he mused. “You are mortal – it is the height of folly to believe you understand what you speak of. Why would Chronos be in Tartarus? He is a primordial – he would recover directly in Chaos were something to accidentally injure his form.”

Percy – might have omitted the whole Percy Jackson within the body of Icarus this time around. Which was coming to bite him in the ass.

“Because he faded, as people conflated his name and powers with those of the Crooked One,” Percy attempted to explain without bringing in elements that would make the god unlikely to trust him. Let it never be said Percy was incapable of tailoring his approach to suit the people he was interacting with.

Apollo stared at him incredulously. “Because they conflated … yes, they have. That’s natural. Every single one of us has a shared domain, epithets that apply to multiple gods at once. That does not mean that one of us has faded! Fading is the last resort! Amalga–,”

The god cut himself off, taking in deep breaths to calm himself in a mimicry of human mannerisms Percy doubted he needed.

“Have you considered,” Apollo bit out, “that it wasn’t Chronos, but the Crooked One himself that you encountered in the Pit?”

Percy instantly shook his head. “No, Kronos was already out by then. He was possessing a demigod.”

Apollo straightened in alarm. “What? Where? When?”

“Um, not now, that’s in the future. Because this is my past,” Percy hurriedly reassured. Struck by a bout of inspiration, he added, “When I loop, it’s always to a point in the past – one that I did not die in before.”

Apollo collapsed against the back of his chair and rubbed his forehead wearily. “Icarus,” he intoned in the tones of one stating something he was probably going to regret yet seeing no other recourse. “Possession does not entail transferring your entire conscious into someone else’s body. And if the person you saw was mortal – then there is no possibility of the Crooked One having shifted bodes entirely.”

“The host took a dip in the Styx,” Percy explained. “And I know the Titan couldn’t channel the entirety of his powers just yet, but every day that went by, the limit would rise.”

Apollo reached out and gripped Percy’s shoulders in frustration. “You do not understand, you foolhardy, obstinate, ignorant mortal. He is a Titan! The ruler of the entire pantheon at one point. Capable of stopping the flow of the seasons altogether. Even constantly swallowing the liquid fire of the Phlegethon itself wouldn’t protect a mortal from instantly dissolving, let alone a bath in a river meant to destroy souls.”

A frown stole onto Percy’s face as something akin to horror began slithering around his heart.

Apollo shook Percy, trying to drive the point home. “Our true form is enough to kill all lower forms on sight! And you think a mortal can host the entirety of the incandescent blaze that we are?”

“You mean I never met Chronos,” Percy whispered hollowly.

“I think it’s highly unlikely,” Apollo bit out. “Even if that infernal Labyrinth of your father’s creates a passage to the Pit itself, I sincerely doubt the Titan can simply drag himself out on his own. There are safety precautions in place precisely to prevent any such eventuality. The whole of the Crooked One can never leave the Pit.”

“Even if someone summons him?” Percy checked.

Apollo shook his head. “Not even then. He will have to be …”

The god fell silent, taking in Percy’s features with ever increasing horror.

Searing hot hands abandoned their perch on Percy’s shoulders – one to slide upwards to clutch at the side of his neck, and other down to grip the wrist the god had once tied a bracelet to.

Percy shivered, cold following in the wake of those hands. Goosebumps rose all over his chest – especially concentrated along the path Apollo’s hand had traversed.

“Oh,” Apollo gasped.

“Apollo?” Percy asked in concern. That had sounded – heartbroken. Enough misery to fill a lake dripped off that single exhalation.

Apollo bit his lower lip until a drop of golden ichor beaded up. Right in front of Percy’s eyes, the god seemed to come to some sort of realisation.

“If this doesn’t work,” Apollo whispered, “come find me, yes?”

Percy tried to draw back, only to be held in place by the hand at his neck. “What do you mean?” he asked suspiciously. “What are you going to try?”

Some sort of conflict brewed in the god’s suddenly molten metal eyes. Without an answer, he removed his fingers from Percy’s wrist to place them once again on the demigod’s shoulder.

“It won’t hurt,” Apollo insisted.

“What?”

Percy rolled over and found himself blinking at the dark walls of the Labyrinth.

What?

Chapter Text

At first, Percy couldn’t understand what was in front of his eyes.

Or maybe, his mind refused to comprehend reality.

But slowly, like a sand dune lost grains in the wind, his resistance to the facts of his past also eroded. With a trembling hand, Percy reached up and touched the side of his neck.

Traced the pattern practically carved into his skin. 

Involuntarily, he found his fingers fitting themselves into the unseen grooves left by Apollo’s hand.

Thumb on his jaw, the heel of his palm pressing against his Adam’s apple.

Percy shuddered, neck throbbing with his imagination.

Surely not? Apollo hadn’t even squeezed. It hadn’t hurt.  

It won’t hurt.

Percy flung off the sheet draped over him and sat up, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. His brain felt foggy – like a sea mist had crept in with the morning and made its home in his head. All that kept running through his mind was Apollo’s resolute yet strangely penitent face as the god insisted that it would be painless.

Yes, Percy could admit that this was just another death – and one a lot less painful than others. In fact, he could even acknowledge that Apollo had probably taken special care to make it painless.

Yet, how could something like this ever not hurt?

Percy wiped off the sweat beading around his lips, feeling better even though it hadn’t solved anything.

He couldn’t think. And that was of paramount importance now that the one person capable of detecting any abnormalities with his Icarus impersonation had proven himself inclined to murder Percy.

“Up already, Icarus?” Daedalus asked sleepily from where the old man was scratching the back of his neck.     

Percy stared at the inventor blanky.

Daedalus chuckled. “Not quite up, I see.”

The morning ablutions were a nightmare – everything kept progressing in a predetermined pattern, yet no matter how hard Percy tried, nothing he did seemed to affect the world. Like a puppet to his own past memories, Percy repeated the words spoken and the deeds performed in one life or another – wondering all the while whether this was it.

Would this be the last life?

Now that he had gotten over the sheer shock of his ignominious demise, he was starting to hypothesise about the God of Light’s actions. But all his theories only served to weigh him down with indecision and apprehension.

The bracelet Apollo had tied around his wrist had lingered into the next life.

Would the hands breaking his neck do the same?

Percy couldn’t decipher his own emotions – was that an anticipated for future? Or a deeply dreaded one?

All he knew for certain was that the caution displayed by every fibre of his being was antithetical to the person he was. Since when did he repeat every single action from memory without even the slightest scope for improvisation should he see an opportunity to do better?

Yet, Percy saw and skipped improvements he could make with his own work in the forge – inordinately afraid that it would somehow lead to his early death.

Daedalus finally had enough of his hesitance and put down the wing he was working on. The inventor straight away demanded, if with a semblance of gentleness, “Is something wrong?”

“No!” Percy blurted out. What if he accidentally revealed that he wasn’t really Icarus and the old man bludgeoned Percy to death with a hammer?

“There is no need to be nervous, son,” Daedalus tried to comfort, getting up from his hunched-up position with a wince before coming over to where Percy was busy building up a sufficient supply of trapped hot air.

The man’s proximity just made Percy feel like a helium balloon about to be released into the sky.

“I might die today,” he found himself admitting. “Wouldn’t it be stranger to not be nervous?”

“Or, you might begin the first day of the rest of a very long, free life today,” Daedalus pointed out.

Percy choked on an incredulous laugh. “If not today, I’ll be dead in three days. Scant comfort.”

And that was if the death of Icarus propelled Percy back into his own body and not simply to the ancient version of the Underworld.

Daedalus’ face grew grave when he responded. “I know Minos is one of the strongest rulers in the world. But there are ways to defeat even the strongest. We already have one of the key ingredients for success – our minds.”

“All that’s left is luck – which we have none of,” Percy agreed miserably.

Daedalus gritted his teeth and pursed his lips, as if he’d bitten into something so sour it was an imposition to keep his mouth closed. Then, like pulling out nails with rusty pliers, the man suggested, “Why don’t you pray to the goddess Tyche? She might see fit to bless you with some of her favour.”

Those words just sent Percy into a laughing fit. “When would she see fit to do that? Once Athena was done boiling me alive? Face it – the only outcome any god wishes for me is an early death.”

Daedalus paled. “What … what did you say?”

Percy felt regret for the man – regret, despite knowing everything the man had done to deserve his fate and everything the inventor would do to escape it.

And yet, Icarus hadn’t done anything, had he? Born a hostage, raised for the slaughter, and sacrificed on the altar of a goddess’s warped sense of justice. The boy hadn’t even received the opportunity to live out the rest of his life without having the last day of it usurped by a stranger from the 21^st century.

Percy shook his head. “As you have no doubt surmised by now – there will be no happy ending for anyone you care for. You have drawn the attention of the gods – and that never leads anywhere good.”

Daedalus stared at Percy, taking in the unfamiliar words coming out of a dearly beloved face, before seeming to come to a realisation. “I might have committed a grave sin by letting my nephew die – but my mother would be committing a graver one by killing you.”

“Gods kill and eat their own children, remember?” Percy reminded the inventor sardonically. “She’ll get nothing but accolades. We’re entertainment for them – Zeus will support Minos’s tyranny, Athena will lead us to our deaths, Poseidon will stymie our pursuers for only as long as he doesn’t receive a pretty sacrifice, and –” Percy broke off, conscious of having spoken too much.

If this were his last life, if he were meant to live out the rest of his days as Icarus, then blurting out facts Icarus had no business knowing wouldn’t help. Insulting the biggest gods would do him no favour.

“Have you been touched by foresight, Icarus?” Daedalus whispered in horror.

“Touched by something, certainly,” Percy mumbled bitterly.

Daedalus shook his head in denial. “We can fix this,” he stated firmly. “It might be difficult, but even the gods can be staved off. They can be propitiated. If Athena wishes for your death, all we need do is find someone she will not gainsay. If it is entertainment the gods wish for, we just have to make your life worth more than your death.”

Percy stared. That … was a remarkable piece of optimism he had not expected from the dour inventor who had chosen to hide in the depths of his own prison rather than face the judgement of the Underworld.

“If you die before Minos, he probably won’t be able to affect your punishment,” Percy realised. “You have already suffered enough – and most of the things you have done till date can be blamed on Minos.”

“What?” Daedalus jerked back.

“Not that I’m saying you should die!” Percy rushed to assure. “Just, living longer than Minos is fraught with its own problems. Not the least being that he will sit in judgement over all who die afterwards – and you can bet he is not going to be impartial regarding anything.”

Or satisfied with death.

“What judgement?” Daedalus asked in confusion. “After death lies only a torturous existence of fading into nothingness while struggling to draw in a single breath uncontaminated by the essence of your fellow shades. That is the only solace – however protected he might be in life, Minos will suffer when beyond his father’s protection.”

It was Percy’s turn to be taken aback. What? The line of people queuing up for Asphodel, the scant few brave enough to risk eternal torment for a chance at Elysium, and those miserable souls dragged from the banks by the Furies for special attention – did Daedalus mean to imply none of it existed yet?

“Does everyone get punished indiscriminately?” the demigod asked incredulously.

Daedalus grimaced. “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” he hedged. “Technically, three judges aboveground decide whether you worthy of going to Elysium – but what merit do the words of the living possess in the land of the dead? What person exists who has not committed a sin worthy of punishment? And more importantly, who will both enforce the rules and decide when you have suffered enough?”

“Hades,” Percy pointed out.

Daedalus shook his head. “Lord Hades takes interest in only those who have offended the gods. That he allows those buried without the proper rituals to haunt the living at all is generous enough.”

The Underworld had been horrible enough when his every incursion into it had resulted in a brush with Tartarus – but it was reaching depths previously unplumbed by anything Percy had ever experienced.

“So, either we dissolve to nothing – or Minos sets us on fire,” Percy concluded, unimpressed. “Or, if he’s figured out how to realise his particularly unscrupulous ideas already, feed on our souls until he’s returned to the state of life everyone would dearly like to relieve him of.”

“Icarus,” Daedalus pleaded. “You bring up a lot of valuable points – but none of it matters if we do not succeed in escaping.”

Percy scrunched his eyes shut and mashed his palms over his eyebrows – hoping to stave off the burgeoning headache.

“Alright,” he said, with his lids still firmly shut. “Clearly, worries over our continued existence, the plots to halt that existence, and the fate that awaits us even if we succeed at everything – is something to be pondered after the current crisis has been dealt with.”

“Yes,” Daedalus encouraged.

“I can’t help but think,” Percy remarked with asperity, “that had either of us focused a lot less on the immediate problems and wasted even a single breath on anticipating all the future struggles, we’d be a lot better off.”

“Icarus,” Daedalus sighed. “It was completely natural that you did not like anyone from the royal family considering they always tormented you. That had you befriended Ariadne, you too might have escaped with her sister is merely retrospection.”

Percy opened his eyes in surprise. “Why would Ariadne help me?”

At Daedalus’ brow wrinkling further in the beginnings of suspicion, Percy hurriedly added, “She didn’t even help you escape, did she? Her boyfriend passed right through the labyrinth – would it have been that difficult to ferret you away in passing? And you were the one who taught her how to navigate the maze.”

“Boy-friend?” Daedalus mumbled in confusion before his face darkened as he understood Percy’s words. “Ariadne has her own problems to bear. And no son of Poseidon will help me.”

Right – the whole Minotaur as a curse from Poseidon. Which – ew! Some of these ancient tales made Percy rather reluctant to meet his father.

Then Daedalus continued darkly, “No matter how much I have been forsaken by Athena, that is one god who will never aid her blood.”

Percy frowned at that statement. His dad had never appeared to have any particular grudge against Annabeth. Perhaps this was one of those vendettas that faded with age?

No – Annabeth had been perfectly clear that they were supposed to be arch enemies. Even cooperation was meant to be considered only under dire circumstances – and it better not be anything but a travail.

“So,” Percy said leadingly, hoping to change the subject. “How far away are you from completing the wing?”

Mealtime had already come and gone a long time ago.

Daedalus grimaced. “Farther away than I would prefer. We might be better off waiting for nightfall before attaching the wings.”

Percy stiffened in alarm. “We’ll die then! Minos already knows about what you’re plotting – now that the wings are almost complete, he’s not going to wait a single more hour.”

Daedalus stared at Percy, apprehension making his eyes wider than usual. “Are you certain?” he pressed.

Percy nodded vehemently.

Daedalus cursed, before rushing back to the wing abandoned on the worktable.  

They were too late. No matter the speed with which Daedalus worked, or how sure Percy’s own fingers while affixing those wings to the inventor’s back, they were too late.                   

Working through Percy’s concerns and sheer disrespect for the gods – compounded by the fact that Daedalus’ own piety originated from fear of consequences more than true devotion – had been a distraction they could ill afford.

“Huh,” Minos scoffed as their barely stuck wings flapped, shivered, and fell off their backs.

A horrified duo stared at the king of Crete as guards surrounded them.

“And there I was, thinking of plucking you.”

With a derisive sniff, Minos deigned to kick one of the gleaming bronze wings. The filaments in the region the king had struck promptly crumpled out of usability.

“Seems you’re losing your touch, Daedalus. Age finally catch up?” Minos jeered.

Surrounded on all sides, with only his body to fight off sharp swords and a malicious ruler, Percy grew aware for the first time that Daedalus … wasn’t actually that old. He couldn’t be that much older than Percy’s mother – barely into middle-age. It was the years of captivity and stresses of navigating the whims of cruel royalty that had etched those wrinkles in the man’s skin and added grey streaks into his hair.

Percy narrowed his eyes, determined to ensure that Daedalus actually got the chance to grow old without sorrow and vengeance twisting him into a caricature of the kind man he still was.

Taking advantage of the monologuing Minos, Percy jabbed the wrist of the guard pointing a sword at him, grabbed the blade from a suddenly lax grip, and slammed the hilt of his pilfered weapon against the guard’s temple.

The man collapsed to the ground.

Percy twisted around – only to see Daedalus held hostage by a cleverer guard.

“Drop the sword, boy,” Minos cooed, making Percy’s insides squirm with a remembered pain he had no memory of. “Is this how you intend to repay my generosity? I even let you spend one last night with your father instead of executing him in front of you. Now you raise a sword against me?”

That did answer Percy’s unasked question of how Icarus had finagled his way into sleeping at the Labyrinth when he was supposed to be a hostage at the palace for Daedalus’ good behaviour.

It did nothing to resolve this situation.

Percy’s hesitation was enough for one of the other guards to take advantage.

The demigod choked, a sharp pain radiating from his side. Looking down, he saw the tip of a bronze blade sticking out of the front of his abdomen.

“Icarus!” Daedalus shouted before trying to break free of his guard.

Percy lowered his sword, knowing from the location and the light-headedness already assailing him that his kidney had been hit. 

It hurt.

What hurt worse was that Daedalus was going to die too. There was no future here where the inventor was going to live a long life and one day be reunited with his real son, albeit in the Underworld.

Percy’s knees buckled. The waves thundering in his ears drowned out Minos’s crowing. 

That was the first life Percy died with a sword in his back.

Chapter Text

Lesson learnt, Percy thought to himself with faux cheer when he woke up. Never get embroiled in debates over theology and existentialism while in the middle of a prison break. It might work out in movies, but in real life, you ended up bleeding to death. Which, to state the least, was … decidedly unpleasant.

He stretched.

Even though the hard floor was barely softened by the addition of the single blanket serving as his pallet, it was preferable to the best memory foam mattress.

Anything was better than waking up on the shores of the Styx.

Pushing himself up onto his elbows, Percy took in the shadowed, roofless chamber created by the Labyrinth with a rising sense of pleasure. There was something remarkably uplifting about finding himself back before he’d made fatal mistakes.

Percy found himself humming as he got up, completed his morning ablutions, and proceeded to help Daedalus.

“You’re remarkably cheerful,” Daedalus remarked.

“We’re going to escape today,” Percy replied cheerfully, refusing to entertain any possibility otherwise.

“The prospect of escape didn’t stop you from complaining about the uselessness of your tasks yesterday,” Daedalus teased.

“I can do this all day,” Percy announced staidly. At this point, he could have cleaned these dials, dismantled those devices, and pumped air into the forge while asleep.

Daedalus laughed. “We shall see how often you come help me in the workshop once we’re out of here.”

Percy shot a guilty glance at the inventor, one that didn’t go unnoticed if the twinkle in those grey eyes was any indication.

As Daedalus went back to poring over the metal feathers he was attaching to the framework, Percy came to another resolution. This time, once they escaped, he was going to insist Daedalus invent hot glue. And that was one formula Percy was going to carve into his brain if required.

Like clockwork, Daedalus finished the wings, they affixed them to each other, and set sail just as Minos and his guards broke into the workshop.

Percy would have dearly liked to return the favour of his last death to the king, unfortunately, Sally Jackson had raised a kind child.

Not a doormat, however.

As if on cue, the contraption composed of cleaning agents, charcoal, and a lit candle ignited with a thunderous boom.

“Icarus?” Daedalus cried out in alarm.

“Just a parting gift, father!” Percy shouted back, the familial word slipping out unconsciously.  

The man bobbed in the air a couple of times before recovering his balance. “Well,” Daedalus said, clearly taken aback at the actions of the boy who’d only ever shown the best side of himself to his father. “As long as you take care over the sea.”

“I will,” Percy assured. He didn’t require another bone-braking plummet into concrete-solid waters to realise that the middle of a flight powered by human muscle, metal feathers, and wax was no place for carelessness.

Knowing the path by heart by now, Percy aimed for the coast of Cocalus’ kingdom – eager to reacquaint himself with the straw bed afforded him in the palace, the chamber Daedalus and he would transform into a functional workshop, the young princess who might just be his only friend in the past, and the training fields where he easily thrashed warriors with twice his experience.

His neck twinged.

Percy flapped harder, trying to escape the memories just as easily as he was leaving behind the Labyrinth. But it was of no use.

Just as his soul always found itself back in that dark, musty, prison of the Labyrinth, his mind always returned to the top of the ramparts – to the scorching hot hands around his neck.

His arms slowed, the ache in his muscles reminiscent of the burn that should have lingered at the top of his shoulders – a lingering remnant of the pressure exerted by a god.

Perhaps it made him a coward, but Percy was in no hurry to approach Apollo, no matter the god’s instructions in case his attempt to murder Percy failed to bear fruit.

As if to throw water all over his efforts, before the exhausted Percy and Daedalus had even made it halfway to the shores of Sicily, the sky trembled with a certain god’s anger.

“Surely the King of the Gods has graver issues than a mortal prank drawing his attention?” Percy tried to flatter.

The steadily darkening sky didn’t seem to agree.

“Minos is learning a wonderful lesson about reciprocity and justice,” Percy tried next. “He’ll surely grow into an even better king once he realises the important facts of life – such as building prisons with roofs. And stocking them with fire extinguishers.” 

The clouds rumbled before Daedalus took over Percy’s fumbling attempts to gain Zeus’s favour.

“Oh, great Zeus, lord of rulers and the dispenser of justice,” Daedalus prayed. “Please let my son escape unjust persecution and find hospitality in a strange land denied to him. I will build a temple in your honour that people will come from all corners of the world to worship, marvelling at the god who could inspire such a towering behemoth.”

Clever, Percy acknowledged in the safety of his mind. Pray for Icarus’s safety – and sweeten the pot with an offer that required a living Daedalus to fulfil.

The clouds paused in their rumbling – as if mulling over the terms.

And yet, Athena was the favourite child, yes? If she was busy whispering incendiary comments in her father’s ears, playing up all the terrible atrocities Daedalus had committed and how he deserved to be burnt to a crisp, Percy doubted Zeus would stay his hand for long.

Percy squeezed his eyes shut before snapping them open instantly as the resulting vertigo almost made him veer wildly off course – right into the turbulent waves below him.

‘Phoebus Apollon,’ Percy prayed as a last resort, remembering the once honoured position the god had held in his father’s court – before minor incidents such as an attempted coup and cyclops homicide.

‘Oh Lord of Light and Youth, please protect us, please convince your father to not turn us into barbecued chicken. You blessed me once with a marker of your interest – let me satisfy your curiosity. I promise to answer any questions about the strange situation I find myself in, but only – please guide us away from peril.’

It chafed to have to plead to a god that had been the reason he’d died – but Apollo at least pretended to listen before attacking. And Percy had already attempted to convince Zeus to spare their lives, however unsuccessfully.

Despite the clear logic, Percy wanted to spit at Apollo, throw things at him, shout at him about the betrayal. Zeus, he hadn’t expected anything from

Apollo, he had.                

Broken dreams were the worst, Percy decided bitterly.

Perhaps Zeus’s ego was sufficiently stroked by Daedalus’ offer. Perhaps Apollo looked over at hearing his name being called and the lure of restricted information was enough to convince the God of Knowledge to speak up on their behalf. Perhaps Athena itched for a worse way to dispose of Icarus – in a manner which could be firmly blamed on Daedalus’ actions and not on Icarus’s own vindictive nature.

Either way – the skies cleared, and a gentle wind blew them right to the coast of Sicily. Where they were welcomed by an ecstatic Cocalus, who had hitherto never been given the opportunity to rule what could become the premier tourist destination around the Mediterranean. That is to say – the obnoxiously gigantic statue of Zeus would get financed by the king – to his monetary abilities.

“I don’t think he has that many resources,” Percy told Daedalus in an undertone.

Dedalus hummed agreeingly. “That’s alright. I’m very resourceful.”

“Nothing that can only be done by you, please?” Percy pleaded, reminded of how Minos had found the inventor in the original tale.

Daedalus shot a mildly irritated glance at the demigod. “I’m not that foolish, Icarus. Unlike you, who couldn’t even prostrate yourself properly in front of the Sky God.”

Percy waved that away. “I was flying! A single bow and I would have gone ass over teakettle.”

Daedalus’ eyebrows practically reached his receding hairline. “You have started using the strangest idioms, Icarus.”

Percy could only chuckle uneasily.

***

No such seemingly light-hearted sound could escape his throat that night.

Caught in the grips of a nightmare, Percy was only dimly aware of the necessity of silence to avoid waking Daedalus. It was a difficult proposition when Minos kept speaking to him in that sickly sweet voice that nonetheless radiated menace.

Percy felt two feet tall, with the king a giant towering over him. Every single step the son of Zeus took sent tremors through him. Percy had never considered Minos a particularly terrifying presence – but somehow, in this dream, the man had transformed into someone capable of squashing Percy beneath his feet.

Some nameless, faceless guards wrenched Percy’s arms behind him and pushed him to the ground. Though his surroundings were shrouded with shadows born of a reluctance to identify what lay beyond, Percy had a sneaking suspicion they weren’t in the makeshift-workshop inside the labyrinth.

That just sent the terror choking him into overdrive. Wherever they were – it wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t somewhere he’d ever wished to revisit.

A warm hand touched the point where his neck met his shoulder.

Percy woke up with an inarticulate yell, flailed wildly to escape the watchful presence, and rolled right off the pallet.

“Not particularly elegant, are you?” a cold voice asked scornfully.

Percy’s eyes took a few moments to adjust to the moonlight illuminating the small chamber they’d been accorded for the night. The dust around the corners and cobwebs along the ceiling gave an air of disuse to the place, barely checked by the two pallets on the floor and the two pairs of metallic wings. A single jug of water placed to one side of the room was the only nod to any current, living occupancy.

Well, that and Daedalus’ snores – uninterrupted by the ear-splitting ruckus Percy had just made.

The demigod peered at the golden-haired god kneeling in a stately manner by his pallet.

“So, it’s my fault you’re being such a creep!” Percy demanded incredulously.

Apollo quirked an imperious eyebrow. “That you fell asleep before paying off your debts is your mistake – how could it possibly be construed as a misstep on my part?”

“You-you,” Percy spluttered, convulsively clutching at the crook of his neck.

Apollo sniffed. “Why pretend such modesty now?”

Percy blinked back dumbfoundedly. Modesty?

Which was when he became aware of the fact that the only piece of clothing on his body was the loincloth he’d worn to sleep.

Percy’s hands twitched – suddenly feeling a keen sense of nakedness even though more nudity was involved in a trip to the beach. Illogically, though, a part of him was convinced that a god viewing him in such a state of undress inside his bedroom was somehow more significant than a simple peek from the Sun chariot while Percy was busy splashing in the waves.

Maybe it was the fact that Apollo had actually remarked on it?

Percy tried to push past the vulnerability by smoothing out the folds of his perizoma. Unfortunately, that just drew Apollo’s eyes to the fidgeting fingers – and consequently, the demigod’s crotch.

Face beetroot red (or perhaps not, Icarus was tanner than Percy despite the enforced captivity making him paler than all but the upper classes), Percy changed the subject.

“What did you do to him?” he indicated the still slumbering Daedalus.

“Ensured he remains asleep,” Apollo answered calmly.

“Temporarily?” Percy checked.

The god scoffed. “If I were to make the state permanent, my father, for one, would be mightily displeased to be deprived of his temple.”

Percy’s brain raced, struck by an unholy, spiteful impulse. “The temple should be covered with marble, with carved friezes depicting every grand event in Zeus’s life. Inside, we should keep paintings, and sculptures honouring the gods. And in the centre, a chryselephantine statue of Zeus. In fact, we could even name the area around it Zeusville!”

A total knock-off of the Parthenon, except before that structure was even dreamed of – that should show Athena!

“A nice enough concept,” Apollo said dubiously, “except your naming sense leaves much to be desired. And so does your understanding of the economy.”

“If the greatest inventor in the world cannot become a millionaire, no one can,” Percy.

“A million … is an indicator of quantity, yes?” Apollo inquired, deeply curious.

Percy gulped. “Um, never mind. What did you come here to find out?”

“Explain a million to me,” Apollo demanded.

Percy closed his eyes. And began elucidating on the wonders of the zero.

Apollo clapped his hands together. “Oh, how I am going to hold this over Athena’s head!” he exulted. “Such a simple, yet effective method of counting – and she wanted to kill you before you ever disseminated the system!”

“Well, you know what they say,” Percy mumbled. “The good die young.”

“Yes,” Apollo drawled, instantly diverted. “But not you. Which raises a multitude of questions. Including why, precisely, I can sense my essence around you.”

Chapter Text

“Your essence?” Percy echoed the god’s words before changing his mind. Ground rules had to be laid before certain, inadvisable actions were taken – once again.

“It did not work,” he stated forcibly. “Your attempt to launch me away from ceaselessly repeating the very same stretch of my life achieved nothing but getting me stabbed to death by Minos’s guard.”

A wrinkle of consternation appeared on Apollo’s brow as his hands tightened into fists atop his thighs. “Stabbed?”

“Yes. And considering it was preceded by you killing me while under false pretences, I’m very eager to not repeat the experience,” Percy informed the god.

Apollo appeared terribly confused as he inquired, “I killed you?”

The god’s eyes ran along Percy’s jaw before slipping down to the wrist once adorned by a bracelet. “Because I wished to release you from … returning to the same moment after a certain stretch of time.”

“Returning to the labyrinth every time I die,” Percy corrected, a bitter taste on his tongue. “And I assure you – bleeding out to death was not improved by the apprehension that you had succeeded, and I really would end up dead. Permanently.”

When Apollo closed his eyes, it was as if the entire room darkened – slipping back to ordinary darkness after having presented itself in the best possible light to attract a god. 

“And killing you was the only solution I had to this dilemma?” Apollo confirmed.

“You happened to think of one seemingly effective solution – and promptly enacted it without any second thoughts,” Percy bit out. In the future, he would appreciate nosy busybodies informing him about their plans for his life before they ended it abruptly. Especially if leave to live a normal next life was the kindest explanation for their actions.

(Percy was terribly certain that Apollo had meant it as a final death.)

“But you still prayed to me for help,” Apollo said stiffly, withdrawing a little into himself at the clear hostility in Percy’s tone and posture.

Percy gaped. “Well, forgive me for assuming you wouldn’t attempt to make my death painless and urge me to contact you again in case the first plan failed if all you wished was to put your hands around my neck and squeeze.” 

Apollo flinched so hard that he lost his balance and fell onto his butt. His suddenly revealed toes gleamed like they’d been painted and polished into gilded orbs.

“I wouldn’t,” Apollo started before breaking off, something stricken on his face.

Percy pursed his lips, conscious of a certain twinge of guilt within – which really had no place existing considering he was the victim here.

And yet – had Apollo suggested death as a solution, Percy couldn’t deny that he might have agreed.

Except, the god hadn’t asked.

“Who are you?” Apollo whispered. “What emboldens you so much you dare speak to me thus?”

“I’m Percy Jackson,” Percy said. “And without me, you’ll die.”

…

…

The dramatic declaration was accompanied by the Apollo.exe shutting down.

Percy reached out and poked the god’s ankle. “You still there?” he inquired solicitously.

“I – I,” Apollo couldn’t quite seem to understand what was happening. “You’re speaking the truth.”

“Of course,” Percy nodded solemnly. “You stated it yourself.”

That is, if the words of the Oracle of Delphi could be construed as ensuing directly from Apollo, although Percy had no doubt that if the Fates created the plot, the god merely arranged it into incomprehensible poetry.

The statement had the god paling to such a degree that golden lines of ichor grew visible below his skin.

Percy stared in fascination – having never thought about it enough to realise that if ichor flowed through a god’s veins, then he must blush golden. But no, Percy was certain he’d at least seen Ares flush and pale in rage – and the god had maintained a firmly human appearance throughout.

Perhaps, in the infancy of their existence, the gods hadn’t yet learned how to assume forms that perfectly mimicked humanity.

A pang of sorrow chased away spite as a new thought struck Percy like lightning.

Or perhaps, he pondered, the gods had yet to diminish to such a point that they no longer glowed with vitality.

Apollo somehow managed to blink away the dazed look, if not the flummoxed expression. “I – I would require a little more information about events if you really expect … anything from me.”

“I don’t expect anything from you,” Percy corrected.

If it were possible, Percy could have sworn Apollo looked on the verge of tears.

“Nonetheless,” the god insisted, “having spoken for you, you are somewhat connected to me. You cannot die just yet.” Then he seemed to reconsider, as his next words were somewhat hopeful, “Though, always recovering from death, having the chance to fix your previous mistakes – does not sound that horrible a prospect.”

Percy crouched over the god’s form, deliberately looming in order to drive in the seriousness of the issue.

“Imagine you’ve spent all these lives becoming the wisest, most learned person in the land. You’ve travelled the whole world, met the most important people, created a palace full of riches, fallen in love, had children, done everything you’ve ever wished to.

And then you die.

And suddenly, you’re just a scrawny boy who must obey everyone, who is never heard because he has no qualifications. The friends you’ve met don’t even know your name, the love of your life cannot bother to give you a second look, your children might bear the same name, but they will never be the same people, so you must mourn them. The riches you amassed exist only in your dreams – all your efforts and struggles gone to waste. And you cannot even share your life with anyone else for fear of being tortured and ritually killed.”

Apollo didn’t even breathe – staring transfixed, horrified, at the demigod.

“Would you like to repeat this same life – forever?” Percy finished in a whisper.

“And I couldn’t fix it?” the god asked softly.

“You didn’t know how,” Percy bit out, withdrawing and getting to his feet now that his point was made.     

“I … simply told you that?” Apollo confirmed, taken aback. “No hesitation, no prevarications. I simply told you that I … didn’t know.”

“Yeah.”

Apollo stared. “That’s a lie.”

It was Percy’s turn to be startled. “Well, you did say something about my being tricked by the Crooked One.”

“The –” that was apparently the last straw for Apollo. The god held up a hand and begged, “Let us resume this conversation tomorrow.”

“Why?” Percy asked sarcastically. “I thought you said there was no possibility of the guy ever escaping Tartarus, so what does it matter if he’s locked me in this time loop? Kronos is still safely locked up, so why the fear?”  

“The whole of the Titan can never escape the Pit,” Apollo corrected in irritation. “That doesn’t mean …” the god froze.

Percy rapidly backed away. “Oh no. That was the exact same look you had before you snapped my neck. It did not work! Whatever you’re thinking – doomed to failure!”

“The whole of the Crooked One can never escape the mesh created over the Pit,” Apollo repeated his own words as pity and horror mingled on his face to create an expression of mourning. “That does not mean a part of him cannot leave.”

A frown sneaked onto Percy’s face as the image of the one-eyed son of Nemesis pledging himself to Kronos appeared at the forefront of his mind. Kronos had only grown strong enough to possess Luke once enough demigods had sworn themselves to his cause even though the casket was clearly something that contained the Titan’s essence.

“It’s a form of summoning,” Percy thought aloud. “Every single time someone swears to follow him, a part of him escapes. Except, by that reasoning, a part of him will always remain in the Pit.”

Apollo stared at him in silent sorrow.

“A part of your essence lingers on me,” Percy followed that chain of thought. “Even though the god who gave me those marks has been wiped out, your power remains.”

“Icarus … Percy …” Apollo couldn’t bring himself to continue.

Percy understood the unspoken message. “If time keeps looping,” he deduced, “it means Kronos’s power also lingers.”

Then in a voice so small it was practically inaudible even to himself, Percy said, “I’m the one who’s bringing parts of him aboveground, aren’t I?”

“There is no guarantee of that,” Apollo rushed to assure.

“That’s why you knew the bracelet would work,” Percy interrupted dully. “It wasn’t the bracelet – it was the power imbued in it. If the loops work despite just one encounter, then godly power also carries over. All you needed for confirmation was asking about Pan – and once I’d admitted to not meeting him in a very long time, you knew.”

Apollo had inquired about Pan – a god who’d blessed Percy with his dying breath, whose mark must have draped over Percy like a protective cloak. Like the shimmer to his soul Daedalus had found so strange.

Wide golden eyes were his only answer.

Percy laughed – a sound devoid of any mirth. “That’s why you killed me. You hoped that instead of Kronos’s essence taking over at the moment of death, yours would – ending the loops.”

Apollo closed his eyes. “It is highly likely that you anchor the Titan here,” the god finally admitted in defeat.

Percy crouched down and buried his face between his knees. In a voice only somewhat muffled by the cover of his limbs, he asked, “Can you determine if this assumption is real or not?”

Apollo scratched his head uncomfortably. “Have I ever told you that the threads of Fate–”

“Treat me like a step-kid?” Percy finished. “Yes. Let me guess – your powers lie in tracking the life story of a person through how their thread behaves.”

“I can read your mind too,” Apollo stated flatly, somewhat offended at his ability being so disparaged.   

“Who can see my soul!”

Apollo scowled, chewed on his lower lip, puffed out his cheeks obstinately – but ultimately gritted out. “You should … call on Thanatos. He’s Death – the one most likely to help you along considering the manner in which you keep escaping his grasp.”

Percy balked. “What if he decides I’m already dead?”

Apollo snorted. “Your heart’s still beating, isn’t it? As long as you still draw breath, Thanatos won’t intercede. He ensures dead people remain dead – he doesn’t cause death.”

“What about Hermes?” Percy asked desperately.

Apollo shook his head. “Hermes only escorts the dead to the banks of the Styx. A duty he shares with Thanatos, but the ability to possibly return fragments of the Crooked one to the Pit is not one he possesses.”

Percy straightened up, feeling as if a lightning bold had struck him. “You think Thanatos can possibly return Kronos to the Underworld?”

There was something pinched about Apollo’s eyes when he answered. “Thanatos is one of the only gods with an express pathway to the depths of Tartarus itself, capable of ferrying along everyone irrespective of power or species – there is nothing that is beyond his Doors of Death.”

“That’s great,” Percy stated apprehensively. “But how about before we take any more drastic actions, we first utilise the great, the wonderful, the one and only – Animus Revealer!”

“The what?” Apollo made a confused face.

Percy smirked. “You should wake up Daedalus. He’s the one who invented that device.”

And who would go on to invent a method to shift a soul from one body to another without having to undergo the hassle of dying first.

Percy’s eyes as he gazed at the slumbering inventor were perhaps a little too calculating – but who could blame him?

Kronos might have assumed that stuffing Percy in the body of a person a Goddess of Battle Strategy was determined to kill was sufficient guarantee. But he was wrong. This body was what would be the Titan’s downfall.

Icarus’s father just so happened to be the greatest mind in history, after all.

Chapter Text

Percy could honestly state that he had never been at a meal quite this awkward before. More murderous? Yes. Filled with people more forcibly determined to get along? Also, yes.

The apprehensive yet resolute manner in which Daedalus kept Percy by his side while shooting suspicious looks at Apollo.

The highly elegant figure of the god while he sipped nectar from an intricately carved, bejewelled, golden chalice that did nothing to hide the simultaneously queasy, supercilious, and frightened cast to his features.

And Percy, who was stuck between two people, each of whom loathed the other in a vague, undefined, never-met-but-I-know-that-is-a-horrible-person manner but were now forced to coexist due to him.

All the while trying to choke down the dry, unsweetened, ancient pancake with water that tasted unpleasantly of blood, but was certainly only iron.

There was just something about this tableau that could not be superseded by anything. The only thing that could possibly make it worse would be if Athena decided to grace her stubbornly alive descendants with her presence.

And yet, despite the unspoken words swimming just below the surface of the water, no one said anything. It was a liminal experience – one Percy wished over as soon as possible.

“Icarus,” Daedalus finally burst out. “Are you quite certain that there hasn’t been a mistake – that you haven’t possibly mistaken a vision of the future for an event experienced in the past?”

“What do you say, Apollo?” Percy raised a sardonic clay cup at the god. “Was it a vision of the future?”

Apollo grimaced into his drink. “It’s Apollon,” he mumbled.

“The first time we met, you introduced yourself as Apollo,” Percy refused unrepentantly. “It’s too late to change now – you are indelibly etched into my mind as Apollo.”

The god took a hasty gulp from his chalice before emerging golden-cheeked. He blurted out, “Not a glimpse of the future.”

A drop of softly shimmering liquid hovered at the corner of Apollo’s mouth before taking the plunge and rolling down. Quick as a peregrine falcon, the god’s pink tongue flashed out and licked it away.

Percy looked back down at his plate – and the completely unappetising mess on it. Savagely, he dug into the food and shoved a handful into his mouth.

As he chewed furiously, Percy was conscious of a slight bubbling in his stomach.

Just his body disagreeing with the food, he reassured himself.

(That Icarus had grown up with this fare was something Percy elected not to remember.) 

Daedalus pushed away his plate and state uncompromisingly, “Alright. Show me the schematics for this device I created to study your animus – and I will attempt to rediscover my previous breakthroughs.”

“I really do not believe this will prove fruitful,” Apollo said uneasily.

“That is what you said about the Labyrinth as well, my lord,” Daedalus rebutted.

“And was I wrong?” Apollo muttered under his breath but thankfully chose not to take offense.

In very short order, the dishes were cleared off the table and a long stretch of animal hide placed on the table by Apollo’s magical prowess. A feather with a strip of leather around the middle to provide grip and a bronze pot of ink were the next items to be promptly summoned.

Gods, Percy noted uncomfortably, had resources not available to the rest of them. Even Daedalus was usually forced to make do with blackened bits of wood and tablets of fired clay that could be washed for reuse. Only the most final of all works were inscribed on parchment. And even then, carving wet clay and then baking them into tablets was preferred due to the difficulty and expense of preparing scribe-worthy parchment.

Yet, Percy had memorised the schema until he could copy it out without the slightest inaccuracy. The pen moved under his hand until the entire parchment was covered in tiny drawings and Ancient Greek squiggles.

“This is highly complicated,” Daedalus marvelled.

“And highly blasphemous,” Apollo objected.

“Nothing offensive about a device to look at people’s souls,” Percy refuted – unwilling to have his efforts spoiled at this late stage.

Apollo looked at him incredulously. “The spirit that animates you is spiritual, to be debated by philosophers – not something to be reduced to a chunk of iron being doused by your father’s invention!”

“Speaks someone stuck in the Bronze Age,” Percy retorted. “One day, humanity is going to douse for iron, smelt it into tools, and travel to the Moon itself.” 

Apollo broke out into laughter. “Your knowledge of the future might be impeccable,” the god chortled, “but your history is abysmal, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Um,” Daedalus explained in chagrin, “The Bronze Age ended with the flood of Deucalion, Icarus. We are all in the Age of Heroes – born from the bones of Mother Earth.”

Percy frowned in confusion. “Was that real? Doesn’t everyone have a story like that? Noah and the Ark, some guy in the Epic of Gilgamesh whose name I’ve forgotten, and who knows what else?”

Quick as a striking snake, Apollo teleported across the table, grabbed Percy by the nape, and dragged him outside the chamber. As the door slammed shut behind them, Percy demanded in alarm, “What are you doing?”

“Should it not be me asking you that?” Apollo hissed back. “Talking of other gods in front of me! In front of your father, in a land that is ours? Raising doubt about our history simply because others exist who may have shared the same events?”

Percy looked up into molten gold eyes and had a startling realisation. “Other gods are real?”

Apollo froze.

“I don’t know why I never thought of it,” Percy marvelled. “The Greeks couldn’t possibly the first or only people to have ever worshipped real gods. The depictions of gods in different cultures are not nearly similar enough to refer to the exact same people.”

Then Percy frowned as he contemplated his own words. “But there are similarities. Names change, attributes differ – but some things remain the same.”

“We are the only gods who exist,” Apollo snarled. “The only gods you will ever worship. Mortal minds are merely too weak to handle more than a glimpse of our beings. And so, they create distorted stories to explain away what they cannot understand.”

Percy smiled, amused at both the affront and sheer terror radiating off of Apollo. “By your own words, either you are merely a fragment of a divinity I cannot comprehend. Or a creature who has moved into the gaps left by ignorance.”

“Of course, I am a fragment,” Apollo stated. “Do you believe you are worthy of having my entire attention? I am the Apollon speaking to you, the Apollon receiving offerings at the temple, the multiple Apollons protecting my Oracles, the Apollon healing the mortal wounds of a soldier, the Apollon inflicting a plague on a village, the Apollon guiding sailors to shore at Ilium, and the Apollon inspiring a sculptor. I am everywhere – how can you possibly comprehend me?”

The sheer derision in that voice was cutting – but Percy noted how Apollo did not claim to be Ra of the Sun barge, Sekhmet the healer and plague bringer, or even Thoth, the God of Knowledge. More tellingly, Apollo did not lay a single claim on the followers of Horus – the god most acknowledged as his counterpart in Egyptian mythology.

“I don’t have to understand the whole of you to recognise when you’re lying,” Percy told the god in a low voice.

“You –” Apollo broke off, too furious to continue.    

“Apollo,” Percy sighed. “The reason I believe in you has nothing to do with my lack of options. Knowing other gods exist doesn’t erase my connection to you. I don’t require having no choice regarding which god to worship to choose this pantheon.”

Mostly because Percy had yet to encounter a single god deserving of his worship, and not because he was a particular devout follower of the Hellenic religion. Belief did not constitute faith, after all.

In the darkness of the landing, surrounded by uneven hand-cut bricks, Apollo’s fathomless eyes stared at him disconcertingly.

“You are a very strange individual,” Apollo finally said, fury and apprehension both banked into smouldering embers.

“Too strange for you to handle?” Percy challenged.

As expected, the god’s pride stuck him fast into a perhaps inadvisable endeavour. “Of course.”

Percy smiled back. “How good are you at mechanical things?”

Apollo’s lips twisted in irritation at being queried on a subject he wasn’t the most proficient at. “That’s what Hephaestus is for.”

Percy nodded absently, mind already racing through the logistics. “That’s alright. Father will construct the device while I help him.”

“And your plans for me?” the god asked suspiciously.

Percy looked back with wide eyes. “You can sit and look pretty, I suppose.”

Without waiting for the gaping god to respond, Percy darted into the chamber and closed the door behind himself. With any luck, the god would be both too insulted to interfere and too flattered to punish them. If they were really fortunate, Apollo might even forget about Percy altogether until after the Daedalus had solved the problem and sent Percy back home.                

***

There was just one problem with Percy’s master plan. Cocalus kept sliding into the room newly converted into a workshop and inquiring about the progress of the Zeusville enterprise.

And so, instead of helping speed up the process of creating a new and improved version of the Animus Revealer, Percy was stuck sketching out everything he remembered from Annabeth’s drawings of the Parthenon.

Every single memory was a crocodile snapping its jaws around his heart – but it was pain Percy finally felt able to confront. Somewhere along the line, after months of absence, desperate pining had transformed into nostalgia. He still missed her – but it was akin to his feelings during the school year. She was part of a different world – and there she’d remain until Percy once more found his way to Camp Half-Blood.

“That building will topple over at the first storm,” Apollo spoke from behind Percy.

A startled Percy turned his head only to find Apollo’s face right next to his.

The god continued to peruse the charcoal scribblings on clay from over Percy’s shoulder before apparently giving up on verbally finding faults. He snatched the stick of burned wood Percy was using as a pencil and erased columns, added others, changed the angle of the floor and roof. Even the very shape of the building was not given any leeway.

Percy blinked at the tanned skin free of any imperfections, at the sharp eyes engrossed in perfecting a plagiarised work of art. Felt the sandy curls brushing against the demigod’s cheeks. Considered the weight of the arm using him as an armrest.  

And his stomach swooped as if he had boarded an elevator hurtling to the ground without any restraint.

The crash was imminent – but was the fall not one of the most thrilling flights ever?

“Is this inspiration?” Percy asked, voice barely more than a whisper. Even then, his breath sent Apollo’s hair fluttering a few millimetres.

Blue orbs peered at him in confusion. “What? No. This is correction. It is as if you have never studied angles.”

“I haven’t.”

Apollo’s hand came up in a flash and slashed a dark streak across the bridge of Percy’s nose. The demigod crossed his eyes, trying to see the charcoal mark.   

“Don’t try to be smart,” Apollo scolded. “I am perfectly aware this is taught to all budding architects.”

“I’m not one though,” Percy protested in annoyance.

Apollo tapped the clay slate laid out on the ground pointedly. “What is this then?”

“Spite,” was Percy’s prompt answer.

Any further conversation was halted by Daedalus shouting, “Icarus! It’s done.”

Percy took the opportunity for what it was and flung himself towards the inventor. “Are we ready to check my animus then?”

“I would prefer to test it on something disposable first,” Daedalus hedged.

Percy snorted. “I’m the most disposal person here. Death literally has no effect on me.”

Unless they counted the soulless individual even now leisurely strolling towards them. (Soulless – was Apollo a vampire by that definition? Percy had an image of Apollo caked in white powder, with plastic fangs bared in threat and upraised arms swishing a scarlet cloak behind him. The demigod suppressed the snicker threatening to break out.)

“I would still –” Daedalus tried to convince him otherwise, but Percy was insistent. He was tired of waiting for a conclusion – now that the moment was at hand, he was willing to risk a singeing for matters to be finally determined.

Obstinate, Percy lay down on the ground and requested, “Please father, do it. I just want this over with.”

A deeply unhappy expression on his face, Daedalus nonetheless obliged. With a whirring sound and a few puffs of smoke, the Animus Revealer finally started reflecting Percy’s body in its bronze viewport.

Almost instantly, Daedalus began frowning. “Lord Apollon? Are you versed with what the animus should look like?”

“Somewhat,” Apollo replied softly.

By their solemn faces, Percy could tell things weren’t progressing as ideally as he wished for.

“What is it?” he asked anxiously.  

“There is a fist-sized darkness over your heart,” Daedalus was the one who ultimately answered.

“Fist-sized?” Percy echoed – aforementioned heart suddenly beating exceedingly loudly. “That’s larger than before. But you can cut it out, right?”

“Maybe?” Daedalus sounded hesitant to give any definite answer, but from him, a maybe was as good as a certainty.

“Have you ever taken a good look at the soul you are attempting to dissect?” Apollo inquired sardonically.

“How could I?” Percy asked reasonably. “That is a reflection of me in the machine – unless you happen to invent a computer and printer, or a life-size mirror, how can I possibly look?”

Apollo didn’t react to the witticism. “That is not an external outgrowth on your soul,” the god informed them flatly.

That didn’t make sense. “Isn’t that the Crooked One’s essence slowly engulfing me like a bog? Pull it out and you uncover me like a particularly ripe dog.”  

From his position on the floor, it was somewhat difficult to accurately decipher Apollo’s expressions – especially given that the god appeared to be trying to mask his emotions.

“Apollo?” Percy prompted.

The name that only Percy used in this time was a jolt to the god’s system.

Like a portent of all the problems to ensue, Apollo stated sombrely, “Those marks don’t signify the Crooked One leaching off you. They’re a sign of your soul rotting.”

Chapter Text

Percy could no longer tolerate lying on the floor while the greatest minds of the past debated the necrotising parasite infecting his soul.

“Maybe you’re mistaken,” Percy suggested. “Apollo’s marks show up on me as well, right? They’re not a sign of rot, now, are they?”

He attempted to smooth out the creases in his linen tunic, but all it did was remind him of the utterly alien nature of the fabric he wore – and how well suited it was to the climate he’d found himself in. That the Mediterranean islands suffered from an abundance of sunshine was apparent in the fact that men’s clothes rarely went past their knees.   

“Lord Apollon’s marks show up differently, Icarus,” Daedalus replied in a deadly whisper. “They’re golden streaks painting the living canvas of your soul. Present – but not affecting you. The darkness, however – is connected to you.”

“You said it’s over me,” Percy protested desperately.

“Yes, there is a certain protuberance,” Apollo agreed. “But instead of one formed by an insect sitting upon you, it is the swelling of your own soul.”

“You’re a healer, right?” Percy was aware he was grasping at straws, but what else was there? “You can fix this?”

Apollo’s grimace was answer enough.

“You can’t,” Percy concluded, voice hollow.

“I have never tried,” Apollo corrected. “Not in a manner meant to leave the person alive.”

“I don’t believe you,” Percy refuted instantly. “You would not give up and admit your failure so easily.”

Apollo looked at him darkly but replied, “It was a youthful curiosity – and I abandoned it when the results were less than satisfactory. Other methods are much easier.”

“And why can’t we try one of those methods?” Percy demanded.

Apollo’s assessing gaze practically stripped Percy naked, something the demigod did not appreciate while already in such a vulnerable situation.

Only after thoroughly inspecting Percy’s body did Apollo reluctantly shake his head. “While I am not averse to the attempt, the chances of healthy portions of your soul detaching are much more likely. And I do not estimate the odds of your recovery from the process particularly high.”

Percy rubbed a hand through his hair in agitation, ruffling the stubborn curls that were so different from the waves he’d inherited from Poseidon. Unbidden, his feet started a circuit of what would one day be a workshop.

“What about Thanatos?” he asked. “You said the guy could remove it, right?”

Apollo frowned in irritation. “Are you being deliberately obtuse? That was under the impression that the blackening was the Crooked One, not your own soul dying incrementally with every death you suffer.”

But what if it wasn’t his own soul? What if it was Icarus, who was still stuck as a helpless passenger inside his own body? What if Icarus had already died, but Percy was wrapped around the legacy’s tether to their shared body so tightly that the soul had no recourse but to remain – and putrefy?

In his distraction, Percy ran into the edge of the sole table they possessed and hopped back cursing.

“Icarus!” Daedalus cried out, scandalised.

Percy stared at the man in surprise at his sudden aversion to swear words. Then Apollo chuckled and Percy realised – ah, they were attempting to make a good impression. Well, it was a little too late for that.

“Should we pray to Lady Persephone?” Daedalus mumbled under his breath. “A brush of spring to his soul might prove beneficial.”

Percy ignored the chatter as Daedalus and Apollo began conversing about treatment options, certain that the one god he’d been unwilling to meet would prove the most useful. He whirled around, opened his mouth, and announced, “I need to meet Thanatos.”

***

“This feels terribly morbid,” Percy muttered when listening to the rattling breaths of the man on the straw pallet grew too much to bear.

“You’re the one who decided you wanted to meet Death,” Apollo retorted unsympathetically. 

Percy winced. Somehow, he’d expected meeting death to be something similar to meeting Hades – find the house of Hades, cross the Styx, knock on the door, and ask for an audience. That both Daedalus and Apollo would balk at such a simple plan had never struck him.

“The audacity, the stupidity,” Daedalus mumbled under his breath even as he created a device to insert healing vapours directly into the old man’s nose. “To think he could just stroll into the Underworld without any protest when that is precisely what I seek to avoid.”

Yes, yes, Percy understood. He was audacious, impertinent, arrogant, and a whole host of uncomplimentary character flaws. But surely, hovering like vultures in a farmer’s home as he died of a lung ailment, wasn’t much better? At least Daedalus had agreed to do his best to help the man, even if Apollo, the individual most likely to succeed, refused to lift a single finger.

Why couldn’t they do something simple like challenge Thanatos to a competition? Gods were incapable of refusing those, weren’t they?

Which was when Apollo straightened up from where he was leaning against the wall.

The god had decided to garb himself in some of his best finery that day – a saffron dyed chiton, a Tyrian purple himation, a gold crownlike headdress, pearl and sapphire embedded gold bracelets, and leather sandals with intricately carved straps that wrapped decoratively around his calves.

Sandals that Apollo had refused to remove even inside the house, unlike the rest of them, who were barefoot. Then again, apparently, being a god afforded you certain privileges not available to ordinary mortals.

A coughing fit from the man they were all holding a vigil for explained just what had drawn Apollo’s attention.

“Can we really not do anything?” Percy exclaimed.

Daedalus shook his head. “All we can do is ease the pain. There are growths inside his body that are constricting his breathing.”

Percy swallowed. This wasn’t … even the knowledge that this would all be reset the moment he died didn’t make it easier to digest. Instead of going on desperate quests to recover a panacea, he was waiting for a stranger to die. Even his presence here in the unknown man’s last moments weren’t out of sympathy, but self-interest.

Apollo had tracked down the sickest person in the surrounding region, calmly walked inside the man’s dilapidated house like he owned it, and taken up a pose against the wall. Percy and Daedalus had merely followed the god’s actions until the ill man’s coughing had spurred them into action.

And now all that action was about to come to an end.

Percy blinked away tears, finding it increasingly harder to breathe as the sick, balding man’s coughs refused to abate.

And then they stopped. The man collapsed back on the bed.

Percy released a shuddering breath. If, after all this, Thanatos still didn’t show up, Percy was going to stab someone.

“Is he here yet?” Daedalus asked, apparently unconcerned with the man they had just witnessed die.

Apollo’s eyes were fixed at the hole in the roof through which the noonday Sun lit up the otherwise gloomy hut. “Nearly,” he said tightly.

“Icarus,” Daedalus instructed, “hide behind me.”

“There’s no point, is there?” Percy asked listlessly. “He’ll have to inspect me anyway.”

True to Apollo’s words, the flapping of wings reached their ears just a moment later. A strange heaviness accompanied the sound, the silence and solemnity of the occasion combining to create a forbidding atmosphere.

But despite how much Percy strained his eyes, he couldn’t make out any death god anywhere. This wasn’t like Charon – who was at least visible as an Armani-suited businessman if not as a cloaked wraith. Thanatos – arrived along an unseen wind.

And he would have departed along the same had Apollo not spoken up, “Thanatos,” the god called out idly. “There is someone here who wishes to speak with you.”

A melodious voice that chimed like the sweetest of all bells rang out. “This soul has already abandoned its body. If your supplicant wished to make a bargain, he should have attempted it before death.”

“This is before death,” Apollo answered, eyes unfocused. “The only purpose the life of this man has served is to create an opportunity to meet you. Have a listen.”

Percy flushed at that callous reduction of the dead man’s life to nothing but held his tongue. However much his temper might fray, he was well aware that this man’s life really did not matter to Apollo beyond that what the man’s death served.

Like ants crawling over his skin, an indifferent yet piercing stare inspected him. Percy stiffened, quite certain that this was one gaze he did not want lingering over him.

The whole world seemed to rustle, before a veil was carefully peeled away.

Percy gulped – all thoughts of anger, apprehension, or regret driven out of his suddenly blank mind.

Thanatos was quite possibly the most beautiful man Percy had ever had the pleasure of setting his eyes upon. He might even put Aphrodite to shame. Thanatos, after all, Percy could actually remember. Unlike Aphrodite, who was an amalgamation of everything Percy desired plucked straight from his mind.

Who was both a manipulation and a temptation to resist.

Thanatos was even prettier than Apollo – and Percy had never anticipated finding anyone capable of outshining that god.

Which was the absurd thought to jerk Percy back to his senses.

“You’re Thanatos?” Percy mumbled. “But you’re … hot.”

A perfect, black eyebrow rose in dispassionate curiosity. “I have been called cold before – but never hot.”

Percy blushed and pinched his thigh – hard. His heart beat thunderously fast, he had difficulty concentrating, and his eyes kept returning to Thanatos’s wings, which glimmered like a moonlit night.

All signs of a classic case of instant attraction.

Just what did it speak of his mental state that his first sight of Death had him drooling all over the god?

“My apologies,” Percy managed to say. “It is very gracious of you to agree to speak to me.”

“Yes,” Thanatos agreed blandly.

Percy cast cautious eyes at his ravenously curious companions, only to be met with a furious gaze that threatened to incinerate him on the spot.

Percy flinched.

Apollo might as well have been shooting lasers with the violence inherent in his golden irises.

All thoughts of asking for some privacy while he interrogated the Death God were wiped out of Percy’s mind. He was confident that any such request for space would be rewarded with solitude – the kind to be found in the Labyrinth while awaiting the arrival of a homicidal king.  

Against his better instincts, Percy sidled closer to Thanatos. He came to a stop just a foot away from the god, which was simultaneously too close for his hind brain and not close enough for his libido.

Being a teenager sucked.

‘Lord Thanatos,’ Percy directed his thoughts at the god with all the willpower he possessed.

Thanatos staggered backwards with both hands upraised to gather his balance.

The god had finally lost the unconcerned, regal expression that had graced his face all this while. “There’s no need to shout, child!” Thanatos exclaimed in consternation, his forehead wrinkling like the teak bark his skin resembled.

Apollo scoffed in derision. “A simple thought and you can’t even keep your feet?”

Thanatos’s amber eyes narrowed slightly before returning to their usual placid mien. “Be as it may, child, you need not think so loudly at me. Speak as if conversing with the deepest parts of yourself, and it will be enough to reach me. There is a little of me inside every mortal, after all.”

Apollo’s scowl deepened even as Percy nodded hesitantly.

‘There is a dead soul inside this body, my lord,’ Percy explained. ‘Except, he cannot leave. We are both trapped inside here, me in the wrong time, and he in the wrong life. Is there any way to release us?’

In answer, Thanatos raised the Stygian Iron scythe hanging from his belt and aimed it at Percy’s heart. But just before it could touch Percy’s chiton clad chest, an arm hard as steel grabbed him by the waist and yanked.

Percy yelped as he was torn off his feet. For an interminable moment, he was suspended in mid-air. It was like taking flight yet again, except this time, he had no control over either direction or destination.

Then his stomach swooped as his bare feet finally touched the ground. Percy blinked befuddled eyes at Thanatos, who unexpectedly stood the length of the hut away.

“Absolutely not,” a thousand voices – reverberating in all the frequencies of sound audible to the human ear, and some beyond – snarled right into Percy’s ear.

The demigod couldn’t quite understand things, mind muddled by the sound of a god’s true voice released in such close proximity.

Percy wanted to melt into a puddle just as much as he wanted to be a diamond staff buried in the earth that would keep the source of the terrific beauty close.

“You are perfectly aware that I do not decide death – only that the souls slated for it find their way where they should be,” Thanatos stated calmly.

“And that scythe is just a prop, is it?” Apollo asked scathingly.

“It is what he asked for,” was the solemn response.

Abruptly, instead of the placid visage of Thanatos, Percy found himself looking into starlight on Earth for the scant few seconds before his eyes watered shut – blinded by the incandescence.

“Did you ask him to kill you?” Apollo growled.

“Of course not,” Percy denied instantly.

Just asked the God of Death to send a tortured soul onto its final rest. What did Apollo think that would entail?

But it wasn’t the kind of thing the God of Music looked ready to hear without destroying the hut they were in.

“Whatever my son asked for, my lord,” Daedalus pleaded obsequiously, “I assure you, it was out of youthful ignorance. Please forgive him if his words have given offence.”

“No offense has been offered or taken, mortal,” Thanatos answered. “Some mortals are capable of facing me with courage and accepting their fate – and your son is one of them.”

Naturally, Daedalus didn’t take much pride in Icarus being called willing to face death. Nor was Apollo much reassured.

The God of Light began vibrating at such a furious rate that Percy would not have been surprised had Apollo managed to churn butter if placed in a vat of yogurt.

Eager to stave off the impending eruption, Percy blurted out, “There are two souls in me, and one of them is dead. I just wanted Thanatos to see if he could untwist the ties binding us together so that we both may go where we are meant to.”

Daedalus’ shocked grey eyes stared at Percy. “Two souls? What are you … are you not my Icarus? Or,” the inventor corrected himself with a pained grimace, “are you not always Icarus?”

Percy opened his mouth to answer – but the words stuck in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to bear the thought of the affection Daedalus had treated him with transforming into resentful anguish. As long as he could continue pretending to be Icarus, Percy could keep Daedalus.

But the moment Percy revealed his duplicity – it would all go down in flames as devastating as the ones that sank the Princess Andromeda.

And Percy just couldn’t take it. He couldn’t bear any more loss.

Apollo’s hand squeezed comfortingly around Percy’s arm before he asked Thanatos, “And what is your conclusion? Are there two souls inside this body – one that has died, and one that refuses to follow along?”

“Of course not,” Thanatos replied, unconcerned. “You know as well as I do, Apollon, that this is no case of an Eidolon possession. There is only one soul in this mortal’s body – and it is the one which has always been there.”

Chapter Text

What … what did that mean?

“You must be mistaken” Percy insisted. “I am Perseus Jackson, son of Sally Jackson and Poseidon. Some god or the other cursed me, and I found myself in the body of Icarus, son of Daedalus. We are not the same people. I am not deluded.”

Thanatos ruffled his wings in the most elegant shrug Percy had ever witnessed, but the god’s looks had lost a lot of their draw to Percy.

“There is definitely something wrong with his soul, my lord,” Daedalus informed Thanatos, simultaneously pleased with the confirmation that his son was still his son and horrified with the knowledge that the boy had somehow twisted his self into creating an entirely new personality.

“Perhaps it is a reflection of his mental state?” the Death God suggested with a lack of concern that would have irked milder people than Percy. “All I can ascertain is that the soul inside this body burns bright with the connection only a soul born into it can possess. Whoever he may be, Perseus or Icarus, he has always been that person. With or without his knowledge.”

Done proselytizing, Thanatos inclined his head in Apollo’s direction. “If we are done here?”

Apollo offered a jerky nod.

Thanatos spread his wings – revealing fluffy feathers multiple shades of indigo, violet, and black, each streaked with a dash of sparkling silver – before flapping the massive appendages once, and simply … vanishing. 

Some facts had the lamentable effect of casting a pall on even the happiest of occasions – and the news imparted by the Death God was one of them.

“Does this mean it really is all in my head?” Percy mumbled softly to himself. Surely not, right?            

Yet, he couldn’t help remembering his own assumption the first time he’d found himself in the Labyrinth – or the sheer relief at the realisation that he wasn’t trapped inside his own mind with no recourse other than to play a deceptive Titan’s games.

His breathing sped up.

Traipsing all over the place, desperately chasing a god, formulating escape plans – all to be told that it had all been a futile endeavour?

What was even the point?

A choked-out sob escaped Percy’s throat.

Even as Apollo’s warm arms gathered him close, even as a worried Daedalus hurried over to comfort him, Percy could only register the rushing sound of his own heartbeat.

He was falling again – falling, and crashing, and swallowing water only to realise that he was drowning.

The fall hurt the hardest when you fell from a height.

Failure hurt the most when you’d held the hope that you might succeed.

If all this was part of Kronos’s convoluted plan to destroy Percy’s conviction, dash his psyche to the rocks, and render him insensate to reality – he was succeeding. Percy was neither aware of Nico’s screams, nor of the drone produced by the figments of his imagination. 

Then something happened that was a little harder to ignore – someone shook him so hard his brain rattled inside his skull.

Percy stared in shock at a stern Daedalus. “Stop ruminating over what you cannot change and start thinking of what is possible,” the inventor ordered.

The wild determination exuding from the man’s grey eyes made Percy ashamed of his minor breakdown. Daedalus, whether real or imagined, was right. Percy couldn’t give up now. And yet …

“What is there to change?” Percy asked helplessly. “Either I am trapped inside my own mind, unable to break free on my own; or I am an impossibility stuck in the past. You heard Thanatos.”

“What I heard,” Daedalus replied with asperity, “is that you are Icarus – only you have become convinced that you are also someone else. That is immaterial to the entirely real urgency that is your deteriorating soul. Healing that is what we must focus on.”

Percy stared at the man in frustration. How was he supposed to convince the inventor that the fact Thanatos had failed to find any presence of Percy was a calamity that required immediate attending?

“Lord Apollon,” Daedalus addressed the god, who kept looking at his own hands and Percy like he couldn’t quite believe the demigod had been wrenched out of his arms so easily. “Is there any likelihood of this rot in his soul being due to his mental instability?”

Apollo opened his mouth to give a snappy answer, only to visibly reconsider at Daedalus’ narrowed eyes. “Noo,” the god ultimately drew the word out. “The torment required to damage your own soul is not one that exists within Perseus.”

“Icarus,” Daedalus corrected. “There is no reason to entertain his delusion.”

Percy jerked away from Daedalus at that denouncement, even as Apollo replied sardonically, “Considering that the boy even thinks of himself as Percy, I dare say that ship has already sailed.”

“Can we focus on what’s truly important here?” Percy demanded. “How do I escape this time loop? Preferably before I turn into a shambling zombie?”

Apollo sighed. “That would depend on the terms of the curse. Most curses have a loophole – some are embedded into the conditions by the caster themselves, while some exist because the caster didn’t think to specifically forbid it. What was yours?”

Percy heart raced madly inside his chest at even the thought of remembering that traumatising moment. His muscles locked, his hair stood on end, and an Arctic cold froze his blood.

It felt like he was reliving that moment again – the same talons sinking into his chest as if his ribcage was a mere illusion, shoving aside his internal organs with callous disdain, and then gripping that which was never meant to be touched.

Through numb lips, Percy recited the Titan’s words. “This fascination with death will be your undoing. Why labour ceaselessly to prevent an outcome you have yet to experience? You wish to prevent the deaths of others? Why don’t you give it a try first?”

Percy’s mouth continued moving, but no sound escaped his lips. It took a couple of seconds for the demigod to realise that the sudden silence, coupled with the tightness in his chest, was because he’d exhausted his air supply and forgotten to replenish it.

He took in a deep breath, his ribs throbbing at being forced to expand to such an extent.

“Icarus,” Daedalus began hesitantly, but that name was incentive enough for Percy to resume speaking

“Why don’t you try getting over death, little godling? That might help you fulfil your prophecy.”

“What prophecy?” Apollo demanded instantly.

“The Great Prophecy,” Percy explained, eager to grab onto any topic that was not his evisceration at the hands of a Titan. “It said I’d make it to sixteen against all odds. And either save Olympus or condemn it.”

Apollo’s lips twisted in thought, even as the muscles in his arms bulged with sudden tension. “How old are you now?”

“He hasn’t seen six and ten summers yet,” Daedalus asserted.

“Depends,” Percy asked. “Are you counting my body? Or my mind?”

“Depends,” Apollo rejointed, “on what the prophecy counts.”

“There was another prophecy,” Percy added reluctantly. “Made after I was already stuck in this loop. It spoke of broken promises and prophecy sent astray.”

Apollo scoffed. “Prophecy doesn’t go astray. No matter your attempts to circumvent it, what is meant to be, will always be. The path taken might diverge, but the destination will always be the same.”

“What if it does count the days spent in the loops?” Daedalus proposed with a frown. “Icarus makes it to six and ten against all odds in some of these loops – but then he finds himself in his younger body yet again, all progress lost. That would certainly send a time-dependant prophecy astray.”

Apollo scowled. “Perhaps. But I am least concerned with the loops continuing till eternity if that means the possibility of Olympus’s fall never arises.”

“Do you truly believe that is a possibility?” Percy asked with raised eyebrows. “Do you really believe we’re not all pawns in the Crooked One’s hands – unknowingly doing all that is possible to bring his plans to fruition?”

Apollo sighed, all the years he’d lived abruptly reflected in the slump of his shoulders, the exhaustion on his face, and even the faded glow of his eyes. “That is the problem, isn’t it?” 

Percy frowned, mind racing now that they’d run through all existing ideas. Thanatos had left before Percy could ask him about any Kronos shaped anchors, but Daedalus was right. The continued existence of Percy’s own soul was what was important right now – he couldn’t help thinking the rot that increased with every single loop was a direct consequence of Kronos’s actions.

Percy reached a tentative hand to the spot on his chest that still throbbed with remembered pain. “Is my soul … here?” he asked. “Inside?”

Apollo’s eyes widened. “The heart is the centre of being.”

Percy had died of a heart attack.

Kronos had reached inside and grabbed something inside him.

And now his soul was infested.

Percy’s hand dropped.

Oh.

The tethers Kronos had sunk into Percy weren’t anything so superficial a simple scythe could carve them out.

While Apollo’s mark was a chain around his soul, Kronos was a worm crawling inside his being.

Amputation wouldn’t be enough – Percy would have to be shattered into infinitesimally small pieces to reveal Kronos. And even that might not be enough to eradicate the Titan’s presence.  

***

“Perseus,” a golden youth shining with all the allure of a chunk of pyrite called out.

Percy was tempted to pretend ignorance or deafness, but the guard at the drawbridge was more attentive – and nice.

“There’s your companion,” the man told Percy, pointing out the figure even now strolling their way in a distinctly feline manner.

Percy nodded a reluctant thanks before hoisting his bag of supplies a little higher on his shoulders and setting out towards the man he’d once known as Apollodorus. They met in the middle of the little dirt road that led away from the palace.

“And who would you be, stranger?” Percy asked with fake cheer.

Apollo fell into step with Percy and answered equally glibly, “Just a concerned bystander. Has the hospitality of our kingdom already worn off for you?”

Percy peeked at the god from the corner of his eye. “Or perhaps, there is somewhere I need to be.”

“Alone?” Apollo raised one sceptical eyebrow. “The roads can be dangerous for the lone traveller.”

“Perhaps I mean to take the sea,” Percy countered.

Indeed, true to his words, the road would ultimately lead them to the small port – and the trading vessels hopefully willing to take on a passenger ready to work for room and board for a one-way trip to the Greek mainland.

“And go where?” Apollo inquired politely.

Percy shrugged. “Such wonderous attractions everywhere – who’s to say I have any one destination in mind at all?”

Possessed by a mischievous urge, Percy added, “I might even go visit Delphi. The centre of the word seems like a wonderful place everyone should see at least once.”

“Haven’t you already seen it once?” Apollo commented dryly.

“What do you mean, oh stranger?” Percy asked in pretend surprise. “This is only the second land I have ever been to.”

Apollo’s shoulders shook. “Really, Perseus. Where are you going? Not to throw yourself in my Uncle’s embrace in the hope his waters can wash the disease off you?”

Percy … hadn’t considered that. But no, he’d taken enough dips in the sea to know his father’s domain did nothing but hasten the degeneration.

Percy considered the god beside him again, wondering if it would be worth it to explain his intentions. On the one hand – Apollo could decide to become the worst impediment possible. On the other, the god could reduce an uncertain journey that might take years into the span of a second.

The answer was clear.

Softly, carefully, Percy stated, “They say there is a waterfall in Greece, from which fall waters capable of washing clean even a goddess. Perhaps it can be the solution to my own parasitic problems.” 

Apollo stood stock still, incredulity twisting his features into something unrecognizable. “You wish to bathe in the headwaters of the River Styx?”

Percy smirked. “Who said anything about bathing?”

The rot, after all, was inside his soul. It would take something a little stronger than just a topical antibiotic to fix it.

Chapter Text

“You don’t have to come with me,” Percy snapped at Apollo after the fifth ship rejected him.

Strangely enough, most prospective employers backtracked when informed they were expected to take on one worker and one useless noble for the price of just one sailor.

“I understand that you disapprove, but I assure you – I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“You are touched in the head if you believe I am going to let you do whatever you wish,” Apollo said airily. “Especially without supervision, but I daresay we all have our delusions.”

“Not me, I’m perfect,” Percy retorted.

Apollo practically leered at the demigod. “Are you now? Why don’t you show me some of that perfection back at the palace?”

“No, thanks,” Percy responded flatly.

Determined to escape Sicily before Daedalus tracked him down and somehow managed to persuade the demigod into not leaving, Percy returned to perusing the ships anchored near the pier.

Apollo, habitually averse to being ignored, demanded, “Do you simply not wish to spend time with me? Is that it?”

Percy tried to keep his focus on searching for a ship seaworthy enough to make the journey to Greece and bustling with enough people to start off that very day, but it was difficult. Try as he might, he could not ignore the tinge of hurt threaded through Apollo’s voice.

Percy turned around in resignation. While he couldn’t quite understand why the god would care, it was clear that he did – and Percy’s constant rebuffs were a source of injury.

“It is not that I don’t want to spend time with you,” Percy tried to explain. “But I need to resolve this situation, and you seem determined to prevent that. If I must get away from you to get to my destination – so, be it.”

Apollo tapped his fingers against a tense thigh. “You could die, Percy. And I don’t mean it in the way mortal flesh sloughs off the soul before the spirit makes the final journey to the Underworld. Your soul is already so fragile – what you are proposing could literally dissolve it.”

“There are ways to survive a dip in the Styx,” Percy assured.

“Are there?” Apollo demanded. “Because I am yet to hear of one, and I am the God of Knowledge.”

“Well, some of these matters are secret,” Percy retorted, uncertain as to how Thetis had figured out the secret to what would one day be called Achilles’s Curse – especially given the strength of will Percy himself would require but which a baby must have been incapable of mustering.     

Apollo stared at him disbelievingly. “You are truly dismissing my advice. People brave untold dangers for just a single word from me – and you’re going to ignore the entire epic I’ve written.”

“You haven’t actually written an epic about me, have you?” Percy asked warily. He didn’t know what he’d do if someday in the future, there was an ancient Greek epic titled Icarus – the trials of a time-displaced youth. Just the haikus invariably dotting it would be enough to dump Percy into despair. 

“Of course, not,” Apollo scoffed. “You think you are worthy of an epic composed by Phoebus Apollon himself?”

And yet, there was something about the way he said it that convinced Percy of the exact reverse. Apollo had written him something – just not an epic.

Percy met Apollo’s eyes and refused to avert them despite the creeping gold in immortal irises. The moment stretched to infinity – even the throngs of people at the port giving the two a wide berth.  

“Fine,” Apollo ultimately growled. “You may board the next ship willing to cart you around, and I won't interfere.”

This sudden capitulation created a curious hollow in Percy’s chest. “You’re … leaving?”

Apollo rocked back on his feet. “Do you not wish me to?”

“Right.”

Percy looked down at his feet, worked his jaw, and then remembered that he was highly unlikely to succeed on his first try. Whatever embarrassing confession he made would have absolutely no negative consequences even if it was received negatively.

Considerably cheered by the thought, Percy admitted, “I’d like it if you came along.”

Percy liked company – especially company that called him by the correct name, knew his reality, and did not labour under the misunderstanding that Icarus had suffered a mental breakdown due to the tortures suffered under Minos.

“I'm just worried it'll be extra work if you're constantly working against me. But if you promise not to do that – I'd like it if you came along.”

Apollo’s throat bobbed with a swallow.

“What impertinence,” the god whispered, “to imply a god will be a hindrance.”

Percy grinned wryly. “You wouldn't be the first person to call me impertinent.”

Apollo studied Percy, which the demigod tried to accept with equanimity. At least Percy could tell the god wasn't about to disintegrate him for the implied disrespect, which made it easier to hold still under the scrutiny.

“Alright,” Apollo finally agreed. “I'll drop in on you. Occasionally. While the rest of the time, I'll be your invisible …companion.”

“Took time to think of the correct terminology, did it?” Percy asked with a grin.

Apollo sniffed. “Well, I am certainly not going to aid in your foolishness. And I did just agree to not be an enemy.”

“And we’re definitely not just acquaintances, are we?” Percy tried to hide the smile worming onto his face but was quite certain he’d failed miserably.

A softness stole over Apollo's face. “I suppose not,” the god agreed.

Unfortunately, Percy could have done with a little godly hindrance.

“Grab your things and join us, then,” Percy’s future employer told him. “We’re setting off soon.”

It was only when the man had vanished into the crowd that Apollo chose to return to visibility.

“You do realise,” Apollo slung an arm around Percy's shoulders and pulled him flush against the god’s body, “that this is a pirate ship?”

What?

***

Thankfully, the ship landed on the coast of … someplace Percy knew nothing of … without any piratey shenanigans. In fact, the worst thing that occurred during the course of the trip was Apollo taking offense to perfectly innocuous comments.

Every time one of Percy’s fellow sailors spoke to him, a telltale prickling would begin at the nape of his neck. Give it a minute or two – and his conversation partner would pivot and walk away with nary a farewell.

Needless to say, Apollo was a possessive creature who was not content with being ignored simply because he was absent – and invisible when he was present.

And then he had the temerity to demand why Percy had disembarked so soon.

“I was afraid you were going to give the entire crew brain damage,” Percy deadpanned while walking along the forested path.

The demigod had no clue where he was going. The only path to his destination consisted of vague directions to find someone who knew someone who might have heard of someone else who’d once learned about the crystal clear, soporific, misery inducing waters of the Styx waterfall. Needless to say, crossing the Ionian Sea hadn’t been as helpful as he’d hoped for.

“Are you really going to walk all the way?” Apollo asked dubiously.

The god himself looked in his element, dressed in hunting leathers with a bow in hand and a quiver full of arrows on his back. He’d even changed his footwear to a well-worn pair of boots. Percy, meanwhile, was stuck trudging through damp heat with his tunic stuck to his body – muscles aching from sailing (something this body had never done), legs chafed from walking, and stomach roiling in the opposite of seasickness.

“Why, is it far?” Percy asked.

“Yes.”

“You could give me a lift?” Percy suggested, though not with much hope.

Apollo laughed. “Absolutely not.”

Which was when a bough dropped on Percy’s head.

…

…

Percy hiccupped.

“Where did that branch come from?” Apollo asked in horror, arms wrapped around Percy.

“Story of my life,” Percy murmured.

There were holes and animal burrows Percy could fall down and break his neck in. Poisonous plants formed a significant portion of the flora – providing ample opportunities for Percy to rub against them, get a rash, and then die of infection. Gigantic trees lined the sorry excuse of a road they were on, each armed with branches that could fall off and brain Percy any moment.

And that was ignoring the fauna that could bite, sting, claw, or just chop through Percy.

Apollo quite visibly rethought his decision to let Percy attempt traversing a forest all on his own. Which made sense – the only reason Percy was still alive was because godly reflexes were apparently superior to a branch aimed at murder.

“I am merely attempting to ensure that you make it to your destination alive,” Apollo tried to excuse his future actions.

Percy tucked his head beneath Apollo’s chin and did his best to appear helpless, shocked, and terrified, but still stubbornly trying to be brave.

By the way Apollo’s arms tightened around him, the god believed the act.

Percy withheld a snort. As if he wasn’t one of the most dangerous creatures in this forest – it would be the animals at risk of a debilitating death if any dared attack him. As for the plants, Percy had spent enough time with the satyrs and nymphs at Camp Half-Blood to know which plants were safe – and that all others were to be avoided.

Even the risk of sudden homicide by nature went down considerably if a.) Percy wasn’t distracted talking to a god and b.) divine intervention wasn’t involved.  

The lengths he went to in order to get a lift!

Apollo sighed. “Close your eyes and hold your breath,” he instructed. “Mortals sometimes react badly to being flown at such high speeds.”

Um … wasn’t this teleportation? Here one second, there the next?

Percy had his answer the next second.

Winds threatened to blow him off the face of Earth if not for the strong grip around his waist and shoulders. Keeping his eyes open would have been an impossibility even had he wanted to – as it was, Percy would have given many things for a helmet.

As abruptly as the assault started, it ended.

Percy sagged in Apollo’s hold, unable to get rid of the black spots taking up residence in his brain. His stomach ached like Clarisse had just punched him, his neck was tender from whiplash, and all his exposed skin throbbed in agony as if someone had taken a cheese grater to it.

“Alright?” an amused voice asked in his ear.

Percy moaned unintelligibly before gathering up the shreds of his self-respect and finding his feet.

“You are lucky I did not throw up on you,” Percy mumbled.

Apollo snickered. “You wouldn’t. I am the God of Healing – you believe I cannot even stop something as simple as that?”

Considering balance was a nervous system responsibility, did that mean Apollo had just done the equivalent of brain surgery on Percy? The thought was disquieting enough for Percy to pop open his eyes.

As soon as he did, his breath froze.

They’d landed in a small grassy clearing with trees on one side and a mountain cliff on the other. The innumerable steps trodden by pedestrians over the years had created a small trail that snaked about a mile out towards a natural basin. And crashing down into it with all the force of the heavens was a waterfall.

Even from this close, there was a strange hush around the place, nature itself reluctant to associate with the stream. Percy craned his neck up, trying to see the top of the cliffside, but clouds obscured the river’s origin.

“Is this the Styx?” Percy asked, a horrified sort of awe engulfing him.

The last time he’d seen the river, it had been polluted with the detritus of human dreams and hopes. But here was the Styx in all its majesty – carving a hole through the barrier between worlds, capable of burning away mortals, and even punishing gods. All of a sudden, instead of an impossibility, his plan appeared achievable reality.          

“Yes,” Apollo replied, subdued.

Percy broke into a run, the prospect of being free of Kronos overcoming any resistance that still lingered about taking on the Curse of Achilles.

But the closer he got, the slower his steps became, until he had to force himself to just put one step in front of the other.

He chuckled weakly. “The aura is really something.”

Apollo strolled over more sedately but managed to reach the bank of the pond before Percy.

Percy … couldn’t make himself take that final step yet. Just the spray from the waterfall was enough to sting like hot oil – the thought of plunging into the pool was almost enough to make him desperately back away.

“It is a little off-putting,” Apollo admitted. “Aphrodite likes washing with it, can you believe? Just another proof she’s not one of us.”

“Isn’t she a goddess?” Percy asked in surprise. “What’s so different about that?”

Apollo frowned in disgust. “She might style herself as one – but her parentage … leaves much to be desired. A daughter of Ouranos and Oceanus, she might as well be an Oceanid with the way she insists on cavorting with them.”

Percy’s eyebrows went up. “Do you … not like her?”

Somehow, Apollo, the son and grandson of Titans, had never struck him as someone who discriminated based on species. And hadn’t Daphne been a naiad – someone, arguably, even lower down the totem pole than an Oceanid?

Apollo scowled. “What’s there to like about her?” he demanded. “Good for nothing –” the god cut himself off, already regretting revealing his animosity towards the Goddess of Love.

Wisely, Percy pretended to have gone temporarily deaf. But without any other distraction, all that was left to do was step into the pool.

Apollo caught his arm before Percy could put his thoughts into action.

“Do you wish to be swept away to the Underworld?” the god asked incredulously.

“What?” Percy gazed at him confusion.

Apollo rubbed a long-suffering hand against his forehead. “You do understand that the Styx doesn’t just end here, yes?” the god asked, exhausted. “It flows into the earth – and the currents are strong enough to drag you along with them.”

Percy flushed. “Right.”

The things he’d taken for granted as a son of Poseidon now tripped him up at perfectly ordinary moments. No current could have taken him anywhere without his will – even the Lethe had obeyed Percy.

And now, he couldn’t step into a simple pool without drowning to death.

“I didn’t realise,” he excused himself.

Or more like, he forgot that just because he was surrounded by the most magically powerful liquid he’d yet come across in the past, he hadn’t suddenly retrieved all his stolen powers.

Apollo sighed again, looking like he couldn’t believe he was actually doing this. Dropping Percy’s arm, the god waved a hand forward. “Go on. Test your hypothesis.”

Percy nodded before crouching at the bank and thrusting his face into the spray.

Chapter Text

The minute droplets of the Styx … didn’t really do anything.

Percy frowned and opened his lips.

A tanned hand instantly covered his mouth. “Maybe test it out on a patch of skin before you go guzzling it down like a particularly thirsty camel,” Apollo advised dryly.

Percy pulled the hand away from his face. “It’s not strong enough,” he complained. “I’ll have to drink for it to be of any good.”

Apollo’s blue eyes widened in shock. “I was joking!” he exclaimed. “Even I wouldn’t dare drink the waters of the Styx unless it was for something very important – and all it would do is burn away my vocal cords for nine years.”

Percy paled. Before contritely dipping the little finger of his left hand into the water.

It burned – it burned like he’d literally dunked his hand in boiling oil.

Percy withdrew the appendage with a curse, and tenderly cradled it to his chest.

“Done?” Apollo asked solicitously.

Percy closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and asked, “Anchor me while I step in?”

“You really are mad,” Apollo marvelled. “Or do you just like pain?”

“I’m willing to tolerate pain for a greater cause,” Percy corrected.

“Absolutely not,” Apollo retorted. “I’m leaving. As you’d know if you’d only bothered staying still long enough, your father has found someone with a soul similarly afflicted to yours. Experimenting with that person is a much better solution than what you’re attempting.”

Percy peered up at the towering god.

Daedalus had discovered something, hadn’t he? The time Percy broke his neck tripping down the stairs? The inventor had tested his Animus Revealer on other people and discovered something remarkable enough to shout for Percy.

It had completely slipped the demigod’s mind in light of all the other plans he’d devised.

Percy nodded, eager to postpone jumping into a vat of hot oil for as long as possible. If the Styx was just a few minutes away by divine taxi, then Percy might as well recover, learn what Daedalus had found out, and then test out the miraculous powers of the river with more information to carry along with him into the next life.

As was his luck, Percy lost his footing on the muddy ground while getting up and toppled over into the Styx.

For a blissful second, it didn’t register.

And then all the nerves in his body screamed with the pain. It was like wrapping a wet blanket around yourself and jumping into an inferno. The protective gauze around Percy evaporated within seconds of contact, and what he had mistaken as hot oil transformed into a caustic solution capable of dissolving diamonds.

Percy must have opened his mouth to scream, because the pain doubled in intensity as he gulped in some of the liquid.

Nico’s words, his mother’s blessing, and even Luke’s crumpled body at the bottom of a cliff flashed through Percy’s mind – giving him enough strength to push away the pain and focus on building a tether to life. For the first time in what felt like forever, Percy tried to focus on the small of his back, the spot he’d chosen to hold his mortality.

Instantly, his mind shied away – the spot too close to the memory of the sharp stabbing pain in his kidney. Condensing all his vulnerabilities into one area and then labelling it his mortal spot was impossible.

He tried to focus on his family, on his mom and Daedalus, and Annabeth and Grover – but the struggle took too long.

***

Percy gasped awake in a pallet soaked with his sweat. It was too hot – the stationary air was a vacuum sucking away his life, his tunic the constricting embrace of acid that refused to release him, the shivers wracking his body just a reminder of his fruitless thrashing.

“Icarus?” Daedalus called out sleepily.

Percy released a choked, wounded sound.

“Icarus!” Daedalus cried out, sounding marginally more awake. The sounds of scrambling echoed in the confines of the Labyrinth as the inventor struggled over to Percy.

“Icarus, what is it?” the man begged frantically. “Have you been poisoned?”

Daedalus turned Percy over onto his side and then, peremptorily, shoved a calloused finger past Percy’s teeth and his throat.

Percy threw up, retching up the remains of Icarus’s dinner, and when that was done, stomach acid and bile.

Somewhere in there, Percy began crying.

“Icarus,” Daedalus whispered in agony.

That was the first time both father and son died without even an escape attempt in sight.

***

Icarus was a nice, polite, relatively charming boy who helped his father with constructing his artefacts, helped Princess Aelia with her lessons, and was always willing to help around the town.

In fact, before long, Icarus gained a reputation as a wonderful boy eager to immerse himself into the society he’d been deprived of all his life (naturally, everyone knew the boy had escaped some ogre).

Percy, on the other hand, was just desperate for any engagement. It was the only way to handle the Asphodel that had become his life while waiting for Daedalus to recreate the Animus Revealer.

And at nights, he stifled his screams into his fist until the vividness of the Styx faded into the noxious haze that wrapped his worst memories. Acceptance, after all, did not imply constant remembrance. Just because Percy had made peace with his past did not mean he enjoyed dwelling on it.

He did not call on Poseidon or Apollo or Thanatos or any other deity Daedalus suggested. In fact, a stranger might have called Icarus a particularly pious individual who followed all the rituals to a t, but Percy was a studious avoider of anything even remotely suggesting the presence of the gods. In ancient Greece, after all, pretend piousness was the easiest way to avoid divine notice.  

And if some mornings, Percy missed being woken by an irrepressibly cheerful individual; or if, after a particularly uninspiring bout in the training fields, he missed sparring with Apollodorus; or even if, while sketching out his version of Zeusville out of sheer spite, he missed the biting comments and unrestrained horror of an artistically inclined god – it was immaterial.

If slipping into the relationship he shared with Daedalus was easier than crafting an entirely new one with Aelia, building a rapport with the God of Light was only slightly less fraught with dangers than petting the Minotaur. It would be easier – but not easy.

Apollo, after all, was not a preteen, sheltered princess eager to befriend the first person to treat her as the heiress to the kingdom she was and not merely a stand-in until her father finally had a son. Apollo was a temperamental, arrogant, yet deeply vulnerable god – and unlikely to react well to any hint of disrespect or over-familiarity.

“Well,” Daedalus noted with deep concern about two weeks into this new life. “I can definitely see the blot.”

Percy, who was sprawled on the floor being inspected by the Animus Revealer, closed his eyes. “Can you draw a life size version of it? And point out how dark or otherwise it is?”

Daedalus hummed agreeably.

As the only one who carried his memories of the past, and hence the only one capable of tracking the progress of the rot in his soul, Percy had naturally asked Apollo to render an exact copy of the state of his soul.

Apollo, with his perfect drawing skills and access to clear parchment, was no longer here – but Daedalus was no slouch in the imitation department.      

Then Percy looked at the circle his father had inscribed into the clay tablet and scratched his head, befuddled. Was the blot smaller, more faded, or less protuberant? He couldn't tell.

“Well,” Percy declared optimistically, “now onto the next guinea pig.”

“What?”

Percy chuckled weakly. “It’s a future thing.” And probably not what he should introduce to a famously morally challenged inventor.

Finding those guinea pigs, however, was an experience Percy was not eager to re-experience. Having never accompanied the man on his rounds, Percy had never discovered the source of Daedalus’ volunteers. It was something he was coming to regret now.

Whenever more than one individual came together in one place, the very act of coexistence led to debates over how their interactions should occur. Once entire groups were forced to live in close proximity, the natural progression was for a set of rules for governance to be established.

And every place with a well-lit public face had a seedy underbelly.

Kamikos was no different.

Percy winced as Daedalus sold his plans for a device that would create a disquieting background noise that could convince anyone of a location being haunted. An in return, another member of the group (engaged in perfectly legal business, they were assured) lay down and let Daedalus run the Animus Revealer over him and take notes about the state of his soul.

It was after the third miraculous invention (this one meant to confuse a dog’s senses), that Percy blurted out, “Can’t we help out at a hospital, or something? I’m sure there must be many there who’d be ecstatic to help us in return for some aid.”

“A … hospital?” Daedalus echoed.

Percy smiled uneasily. “Yes – a location with healers, that sick people go to in order to seek healing.”

“You mean, the house of a medicine person? Or a temple?” Daedalus asked in confusion.

The leader of the group they’d been dealing with, stepped in with an interested look. “No, your son means a location with multiple medicine people – open to whoever can pay, yes?”

“Open to whoever requires help,” Percy corrected. “And yes, it would be a temple. The priests, I suppose, would be some of the healers, though others would be welcome as well.”

Wasn’t that how the first hospitals in the Hellenistic world began? Inside the temples of Asclepius? Why was this such a surprise to those here?

Wait … was Asclepius even born yet? Percy had the horrifying realisation that not only was he living in a time before his friends were born, but even Mr D was probably still sewn into Zeus’s thigh – that is, if he’d even been conceived yet.

The thought was discombobulating enough that Percy only came to his senses when he was being patted across the back approvingly.

“I didn’t think you were worth much, I’ll admit,” Agapetos told him without a hint of shame. “Merely benefitting from your father’s skills.”

Percy had barely narrowed his eyes before the man continued, “But I understand I was wrong now. To propose such a civic undertaking – and then take on the responsibility of enacting it, is no small feat. Boys these days – everyone wants to go out on a quest, kill a monster, marry a princess, bring home boatloads of goods. Everyone wants to leave. But no one wants to stay and improve Kamikos.”

Percy’s lips twitched uncomfortably. Why was he getting the impression that he might have been signed up for something he couldn’t have been less suited for?

And yet, Daedalus had a knack for finding the strongest people in society – what Agapetos wanted, happened. And what Agapetos currently wanted was a hospital with the best healers in town. If things worked out as intended, they’d soon be the premier medical tourism destination – and Agapetos would get rich off all the customers.

(Percy didn’t dare ask, “Customers for what?”)

By the end of the month, Percy found himself at the head of a growing congregation of priests and the couple of local healers in town. Apollo’s temple had somehow been repurposed into a makeshift medical camp where people came for remedies to small ailments, to get wounds stitched, and on one remarkable occasion, to become an apprentice healer.

The statue of Apollo, Percy was convinced, was eyeing him dubiously. Percy agreed wholeheartedly – when your entire medical knowledge was comprised of first-aid classes and a list of healing songs reserved for Apollo’s children (that the guy apparently never paid enough attention to in order to notice when they weren’t being sung by one of his actual children), making you the director of a budding medical hospital was a bad idea.

Unfortunately, Percy was that novel combination of a believer in godly miracles, practical follower of science, and successfully indoctrinated product of biology class. And diplomatic – one could never forget the diplomacy.

And now, the priests of Apollo were willing to hear out one of his children (Daedalus had given up on defending his faithfulness to his wife), the local healers were willing to brook the comments of a nouveau savant, and everyone else was just eager to follow Percy’s utterly reasonable orders.

And then the first ship carrying a royal injury arrived on shore – replete with the obligatory threats to wipe Kamikos off the ground if they failed.

Which was when Percy found himself grovelling in front of the altar to Apollo, “I am so sorry. I never meant to set myself up as some sort of healer extraordinaire, capable of the biggest miracles. I just knew of a few techniques, an idea of how hospitals should be planned – and now the whole town’s hostage! Except we don’t even know what in Tartarus is wrong with that brat!”

The sigh flattened Percy’s hair to his head.

Percy sneaked an eye open to the sandalled feet of a god.

“I was wondering when you’d get in over your head,” Apollo admitted cheerfully. “Especially since I really don’t remember having a child with your father – and that’s one mortal everyone would remember, don’t you think?”

Chapter Text

“So … you’re my son, huh?” Apollo asked dubiously.

Percy withheld a wince and said carefully, “So, they say.”

Walking through the wooden hallways of the temple of Apollo with the god himself at his side was like walking on a tightrope. One wrong move, one careless word, and Percy would find himself plunging to his death. And no matter how often he’d died, familiarity did not render the prospect favourable.

As Apollo peered suspiciously at him, the demigod was conscious of the fact that he really did not want to be reduced to such tiny pieces that he wouldn’t even serve as fertiliser.

“Are you quite certain?” Apollo pressed. “Because I really do not remember you.”

Percy couldn’t help it. He smiled at the god as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, and inquired politely, “Remember all your kids, do you?”

Apollo flinched back like he’d been slapped.

The moment of vulnerability only lasted for a moment, however, and the god rebounded with a snarky, “The ones worth remembering, certainly.”

Percy bit the inside of his cheek in an effort to hold in his tongue. No matter how much he told himself that the world would simply return to the save time, it couldn’t erase the real fear in Aelia’s eyes as she looked at the ships of soldiers that had arrived at their shores.

Percy might have gotten used to dying – but he had no desire to see anyone else do the same.

Despite the impertinence that would have had Zeus setting Echidna on Percy already, Apollo merely returned to staring at Percy. The stare burned the side of the demigod’s skin like a particularly bad sunburn, but Percy was willing to tolerate it if it resulted in a healed Prince Whine that would depart from Kamikos.  

The head priest of the temple met them at the doorway of the antechamber they’d stashed the prince in. At Percy’s imploring gaze, the man shook his head.

“Nothing. I’ve even tried the few chants that usually gain Lord Apollon’s attention, but even that has had no effect.”

Apollo, pretending he wasn’t the very god being complained about, inquired, “What is the ailment? The symptoms?”

The priest looked at the golden-haired, fresh-faced youth in question, but was desperate enough to admit, “We cannot find anything wrong. The prince claims to suffer intermittently from a wide variety of symptoms – but every remedy we suggest is one that has already been tried and disproved.”

Apollo raised an imperious eyebrow. “That’s not an answer.”

Percy stepped in before anyone could get cursed – especially a man devout enough to dedicate his entire life to Apollo. “That’s the thing. He doesn’t have any symptoms right now. It is why he has made the journey here now. He travelled to the Oracle of Delphi, who directed him here.”

Apollo’s cheek twitched before the god said. “Well, lead on. Might as well see this perplexing patient.”

“So, you’ll help?” Percy asked eagerly.

Apollo smirked. “I’ll watch while you try to help the prince.”  

Percy rubbed his brow before striding into the chamber.

The first thing Percy saw was a young man with short hair and a carefully curled moustache lying listlessly on the bed usually occupied by the head priest himself. The second thing was visible scent of burning herbs rendering the windowless room stuffy.

Percy sidestepped the table with the ornately carved staff leaning against it and approached the prince.

“So, another charlatan here who’ll fail to cure me?” the prince demanded.

No doubt the prince had a name – but he was also authoritative enough to be addressed universally as “My prince”. In short – due to the lack of an actual name, Percy had taken to mentally referring to him as Prince Whine. A catchy title if he were to say so himself.

“We are doing everything in our power to improve your situation,” Percy assured, his patience sorely tested. “Unfortunately, these things sometimes take time.”

“Time I might not have!” Prince Whine cried out. “My constitution gets sicklier by the day! One more cold, and I’ll be carried off.”

“You look like a perfectly healthy individual to me,” Apollo commented, more engrossed in buffing one of the gems on the two-inch thick gold band around his forearm than the patient.

“And you haven’t even looked at me,” the prince snapped. “If your hospitality is so lacking, perhaps you should have a limb chopped off to make your body equally lacking.”

Apollo looked up, an aura of danger surrounding him. “Icarus,” the god instructed softly. “Why don’t you inspect our esteemed guest once again? I am certain that this time, you will definitely find something wrong.”

“Did you curse him?” Percy winced, wishing for the umpteenth time that the gods weren’t so given to disguises.

What was this fascination with testing mortals in order to ascertain whether they were worthy of a blessing or a curse? Could they not just appear in all their immortal splendour and put the fear of themselves in their subjects?

“Of course not, Icarus,” Apollo chided. “This is a temple of Phoebus Apollon – as if I would curse a supplicant here.”

“Isn’t he also a god of plagues and locusts?” Percy asked sardonically even as he returned to Prince Whine – he of the non-existent ailment.

“To keep away plagues and locusts,” Apollo defended himself perfunctorily. “You claim him as a father, and then display such ignorance of his domains.” The god tutted in disappointment.

Percy closed his eyes momentarily, before forcing himself to inspect the prince again. He’d thought of Apollo as many things – but a father was certainly not one of them.

“No?” Apollo mocked.

Percy ignored him, all his attention devoted to discovering the illness afflicting the prince. Unfortunately, medicine as entirely symptomatic – and unless the prince began displaying some, it would be impossible to make even a halfway accurate diagnosis.

Where was a CBC when you needed one? Or even an X-ray?

Ultimately, Percy was forced to admit defeat – again. He rose from his crouch, the coil of concern in his stomach solidifying into a metal sphere.

“Weren’t you going to impress me with a demonstration of your prowess?” Apollo queried silkily.

Percy scowled. half-heartedly. “And weren’t you here to remedy the deficiencies in my knowledge? Which one of us is an actual healer, again?”

At this point, Percy could barely even claim to be a nurse – and that too only by virtue of his supposed parentage. In the real world, he wouldn’t even pass the test to be a volunteer.

Apollo frowned delicately. “Are you quite certain you are my son?”

“What else was I to assume when you accepted my song to you, except that you were claiming me?” Percy countered.

Apollo crossed his arms and heaved a deep sigh. “You certainly have the drive and the spirit,” the god admitted reluctantly. “But you are much more likely to be parent to one of my children than an actual son of mine.”

Percy spluttered, certain that his cheeks must resemble the morning sky. “Why would you even say that?”

“Your utter lack of any talent at healing, for one,” Apollo answered bluntly.

“Focus on me!” Prince Whine shrieked.

“You’re cursed,” Apollo snapped at the prince. “And unless you wish me to worsen the effects, you will keep your mouth shut in front of your betters.”

The sheer rage radiating off the god was almost enough to make Percy cower – almost.

There would have been a murder that day, had Dedalus not pushed open the door with his portable Animus Revealer contraption. 

“Icarus!” the man enthused. “Here – this device should help with the diagnosis. Whatever affliction troubles his body must be reflected in his animus – and this will allow us to see it!”

“Since when do you do medical inventions?” Apollo questioned, momentarily diverted.

Unlike most others, it took Daedalus just one glance to recognize the force of nature concealed within a mortal guise. He paled, before rallying. “My lord! Just a simple tool – how can I not aid my son in such a noble endeavour?”

Apollo inspected the inventor closely, prompting Percy to throw himself in front of the man. “This is a wonderful thing!” Percy interrupted the stare-off nervously.

Apollo’s eyes narrowed. “Yes?” he asked testily.

Percy clasped his hands together. “We’re all working together to heal a malady!”

Like he was admitting Michael had literally shoved a few snatches of entreating songs in their hands and told them to pray like hell if injured before seeing Percy and Beckendorf off. Percy had the sneaking suspicion that when the demigod had mentioned Apollo’s disinclination to keep track, he might have just referred to the duration of the fight against Typhon.

Why on Earth would any god not keep track of the people they were blessing – especially when imparting the blessing was as good as claiming a child?

A confused frown overtook Apollo’s features. He didn’t seem convinced, but also appeared equally reluctant to admit Icarus might not be related to him.

It was just a matter of minutes to settle the scared prince in the appropriate position before running the viewport over his body.

Percy froze.

“Is that?” he wondered in a hushed voice.

“The same as you!” Daedalus whispered back.

“What is it?” Apollo craned his neck, annoyed at being kept in the dark.

“Am I dying?” the prince whimpered.

“Of course,” Apollo answered, distracted. “You’re mortal – did you expect otherwise?”

Percy stared at the guy in bemusement. All of a sudden, the utterly abysmal bedside manner of the entirety of cabin seven made a lot more sense.

It was genetic.

“His soul’s rotting!” Apollo exclaimed, inordinately gleeful at announcing such a terrible diagnosis.

“But why?” Daedalus inquired. “Has something dreadful happened to you in the past that might affect your soul to such an extent?”

The prince shrugged helplessly. “I have been like this from birth. One day I am healthy as an ox, the next I am unfit to even climb off the bed.”

Percy studied Apollo. “You said he was cursed. You could tell just like that?”

Apollo looked torn between being insulted and amused. The scales finally dipped one way and he chuckled. “I am a god, Icarus. Did you think just because you failed so dreadfully at treating him, so would I?”

“But who would curse me as a child?” Prince Whine asked blankly.

“I wouldn’t assume your infancy will be much of a consideration for people wishing you harm,” Percy said dryly. “Who knows, you might have been born solely to be killed.”

“So that blotch is a sign of a curse?” Daedalus clarified, eager to change the subject from prenatal curses and the crimes committed by parents that their children had to pay for.

Though somewhat similar in appearance, the prince’s infliction had progressed far past Percy’s own condition. An inky blot lay nestled at the centre of the prince’s torso. Strands of ink snaked off the dark core to wrap all around his body, ready to constrict any part of the animus at any moment – and send Prince Whine into a collapse.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Apollo said mysteriously. “What is definite, however, is the fact that an immortal’s anger hovers over him. Whoever it is that has been offended, has laid a considerably powerful curse.”

Percy considered that. “So, a curse anchored in the soul is treated as an infection? And every time the curse flexes, the damage worsens – and when the soul fails at containing it, so does the rot.”

“Which god did it?” the prince cried out in panic. “Who am I supposed to propitiate?”

“Go ask the Oracle of Delphi,” Apollo instructed maliciously.

“I would die before making the journey again!” the man wailed.

***

The priest of Hermes scratched his head in confusion. The temple of the messenger god was one of the most laidback ones – composed of a collection of stone pillars at a corner of the marketplace, manned by a priest that never stood on more ceremony than absolutely required to show respect.

“My patron would recognise the source of the curse, I’m certain,” the man said apologetically. “But he is also very busy. I can pray to Lord Hermes on your behalf, but whether he will have the time to reply is another thing altogether.”

“Try,” Prince Whine ordered, with just the slightest of tremors in his voice.

The priest shot a glare at the man from beneath half-closed lids but obliged. 

While the priest and prince went about an arcane ritual, Percy, Daedalus, and Apollo hovered at the entrance of the open-air temple.

“Is it not irksome, pretending to be human and accompanying us everywhere?” Percy asked Apollo, a tense smile on his face.

The god hummed, his amused eyes fixed on the figure of the prince even now wiping the ground with his own clothed body. “Oh, do not worry about entertaining me. This is highly diverting.”

“Is it not more enjoyable when ensconced in your palace, sipping nectar and being fed ambrosia by enamoured nymphs?” Percy tried.

Apollo looked at him with a bemused expression. “Just what do you think gods do all the time?”

Eat popcorn while laughing at the life and times of unfortunate demigods? Instead of voicing that incendiary thought, Percy said, “Assuage your curiosity about the impossibilities of life?” 

“Oh, I am doing just that,” Apollo purred, something knowing in his gaze.

Percy threw up his hands in disgust. “Why are you not asking anything then? You clearly don’t trust your own past actions or the proof in front of you – then why not try to disprove it?”

“Icarus!” Daedalus hissed, white-faced in fear.

Apollo, contrary creature that he was, chuckled. “Unfortunately for you, I am also capable of patience. Why press for lies when observation can net me so many truths?”

Apollo’s pleasure, however fake, acted as a magnet for others – attracting gods like flies to a buffet. With the hum of a thousand tiny wings beating in tandem, a chiton-clad, curly-haired young man materialised mid-air.

“Apollon! Fancy seeing you here! Athena’s been spitting mad that you’ve claimed her grandson, and now here you are – finally inviting me to the fun!” the figure chattered rapidly.

“Hermes,” Apollo greeted with a smile. “Not too busy to visit?”

Hermes, who wore only an artfully draped cloak, held his caduceus to his chest in mock hurt. “You joke. As if I would ever pass up on an opportunity to learn new gossip – especially about you.”

Apollo winced. “Really, brother. You cannot resist the lure of trouble, can you?”

Hermes winked, something terrifyingly wicked on his face. “You know me.”

Then the god’s eyes fell on Percy, and the mirth disappeared, only to be replaced by an implacable anger.

“In front of two gods, blatantly eavesdropping on a conversation not meant for you,” Hermes observed dangerously.

“Is it awe that has made you thoughtless … or sheer disrespect?”

Chapter Text

“In front of two gods, blatantly eavesdropping on a conversation not meant for you. Is it awe that has made you thoughtless … or sheer disrespect?”

The words reverberated in the air as Hermes prowled over, his eyes glinting like sunlight trapped in amber.

Percy gulped. “Awe, definitely,” the demigod assured.

Out of the corner of his eye, Percy could see the frozen figures of Daedalus, the priest, and the prince – all on their knees with heads bowed in reverence. Behind them, the chatter and bustle of the market continued, unaffected by the presence of any god.

Yet, Daedalus – the ever-paranoid father – gave not a hint of apprehension at his son having possibly drawn a god’s anger.

Everyone but the two gods and Percy were caught in a web weaved of mist and imagination. 

“You saw through the Mist to successfully eavesdrop?” Apollo asked, taken aback.

“You should probably put in a little more effort into concealment when discussing secrets,” Percy advised with a nervous grin.

Just as he ought to put in a little more effort into pretending to be ordinary. 

Disregarding all physical boundaries and personal space, Hermes tipped Percy’s chin up with a marble finger. “Such slate-grey eyes,” the god mocked. “Are we certain he’s yours, Apollon? Or were you simply so blinded by besottedness that you forgot to pluck out these orbs?”

“Now, now, Hermes,” Apollo remarked idly, even though his gaze was a rain of sharp arrows aimed straight at Percy’s heart. “Those eyes are quite pretty, especially when they stare so defiantly. Athena’s too good at pretending subservience to forget this aspect of the disguise.”

Percy blinked rapidly, hoping the constant friction would bring tears to his eyes. Hopefully, the show of fear and repentance would appease Hermes and return him to the easy-going, helpful god Percy had always known him as.

It worked.

The god drew back, disappointed at the easy capitulation. “If you say so,” he tossed at Apollo.

The world stuttered, like it was revving its engines to escape the quagmire it was stuck in, before normalcy returned.

At seeing his patron standing before him, the priest fell into a profusion of praise – addressing Hermes with a variety of epithets, out of which Agoraeus was the only one Percy recognised.

“Ah, dear Silenus,” Hermes smiled, back to being personable now that his temper had been temporarily ameliorated. “Such a sycophantic ceremony – do you perhaps not like our newest client?”

“It is not up to me to disapprove of individuals, my lord,” the priest replied self-righteously. “I welcome all who would fling themselves on your mercy – whether they will receive succour is only your provenance.”

Hermes chuckled throatily – a sound that sent Silenus’s tunic fluttering with the shivers wracking his body. “Well, well. How can I disregard such a grand offering? A chest full of gold, hmm?”

Every step of the god shook the ground – and Prince Whine’s body along with it.

Negligently, Hermes nudged the man’s shoulder with a sandalled foot. “What do we have here? Though I must say, if even Apollon has given up on you, your ailment is bound to be beyond my ken.”       

“Oh, I've diagnosed him,” Apollo inputted, professional pride offended. “It's the origin of the curse afflicting him this miserable excuse for humanity would like identified.”

A malicious smirk overtook Hermes’s face. “Ah. Yes, I understand why you needed me. I do indeed recognise this particular handiwork.”

“You do, my lord?” Prince Whine pleaded, hope beginning to transform his features into something beatific.

“It's incurable,” Hermes replied callously. “You offended Persephone so much, that she cursed you with a winter that would follow you into every life.”

“My lord!” the prince whimpered.

“And many lives may you live,” Hermes intoned.

After the dazed price had been escorted out of the small enclosure, Silenus went about spreading a sheet on the dusty ground, and then laying a platter of dried fruits and bowls of honey sweetened yogurt on it, before departing to keep guard.

Taking it all in his stride, Hermes sat down on the veritable picnic blanket.

“Now, why did you really call me here?” the God asked in a business-like manner.

Apollo took a seat on the sheet before looking at Percy sardonically. “Indeed Icarus, why did I call Hermes here?”

Percy started. “What?”

A little annoyed, a little amused, but mostly pitying, Hermes replied, “I am very busy, Icarus. That I am here right now is only because Apollon added his call to my priest’s. And apparently, he did it to help you. So, speak.”

Beneath the indifferent cast to his features, Apollo appeared discomfited. Perhaps the jibe at not remembering his children had hit home, Percy realised. Perhaps Apollo had looked at Icarus, seen a boy his subconscious had claimed as a son, and then registered the fact that Icarus was a complete unknown.

Perhaps Percy's accusation that Apollo had accompanied them solely to disclaim Icarus had also hurt. Apollo, now that Percy was beginning to recall faint snatches of his mythology/history lessons, had been a somewhat good father. A terrible lover, but a better parent than most other gods.

As long as it had been allowed, Apollo had raised children – his and those of other people.

You didn't do that without having at least some modicum of affection for children. Even in the future, the Apollo cabin had been one of the fullest.

It was only now, looking at an Apollo who'd apparently summoned another god for the sole purpose of fixing an anomaly in Percy’s soul, that Percy had an earth-shaking realisation.

Cabin Seven was not full due to an especial promiscuity on Apollo’s part – the god was simply better at actually claiming most of his children.

Oh, please don't make me feel guilty for hurting the feelings of the guy who has literally murdered me.

While Percy was stuck in his moral quandary, Daedalus had his priorities straight. He bowed his head in a deep obeisance and said, “My utmost gratitude for your benevolence, my lord.”

Percy, lost in thought as he was, missed the cues shot his way until Daedalus quite literally tugged Percy down to his knees.

“There is a similar curse on Icarus, Lord Hermes,” the inventor explained. “We neither know who has placed it on him, nor how to ameliorate its effects.”

Hermes’s eyebrows went up and the god flicked curious eyes at Apollo before beckoning Percy forward.

Still on his knees, Percy crawled forward – an utterly undignified movement that he would nonetheless repeat umpteen times were it to gain him some sort of answer.

Calmly, prosaically, Hermes brought his fingers to Percy's shoulders, undid the clasps holding the demigod’s tunic together, and tugged the resultant tube of cloth down.

Percy froze. Was this not too forward?

Yet, perhaps out of respect to the deeply hidden concern on Apollo's face, there was nothing lascivious about Hermes’s gaze.

“Something similar, yes,” Hermes mused, eyes the black of the void. “Someone has gone to considerable lengths to anchor a curse into your soul. And it is one that will follow your soul through all its reincarnations. No dips in the Lethe, no changing of your body, not even being transformed into the stars, will free you from this.”

Percy swallowed down the trepidation before asking, “And what if I dissolve my soul? Dissolve it until the tethers come unattached?”

“I suddenly understand your worries, brother,” Hermes remarked wryly towards Apollo. “The boy is the mixture of courageous and foolhardy that marks the best and worst of heroes.”

“He’ll be immortalised in mortal memory,” Apollo stated softly, his words as much promise as prophecy.

“But for the flight or for the fall?” Hermes quizzed.

“If the soul dissolves, though, is there a way to bring it back together?” Daedalus followed Percy's chain of thought.

Hermes shrugged. “I am Hermes Psychopompus. I do not heal souls – merely guide them.”

“And is there someone in there?” Percy pressed, trying one last time to ascertain whether this was dream or reality, the past or memory.

Hermes blinked surprised eyes. “Someone in there?”

“Does the one who cursed you speak to you,” Apollo quizzed.

Percy kept silent.

Hermes frowned. “Well, a part of the immortal who cursed you certainly lingers – if only for the purposes of ensuring the curse carries over into your next life. The journey into the Underworld would otherwise wipe most curses away.”

Brow furrowing in thought, Percy's finger crept its way to his mouth before the demigod began chewing on his nail.

A spell rooted in his soul that began as a curse that could subvert even reincarnation.

Apollo repeating words that Percy must have informed him of.

The Oracle making a prophecy with seemingly fewer layers than usual despite her warning of the inscrutability of her words until they had already come to pass.

Thanatos informing him quite baldly of the fact that there was only one soul in this body.

The hazy, incomprehensible dream about a punishment in Minos’s court that had been something other than a demigod dream.

Your soul a swinging door into yesterday.

“I'm Icarus,” Percy whispered, stunned.

“Yes,” Hermes drawled. “Was that in question?”

“But I'm also Percy.”

“Is that who you were in your past life?” Apollo questioned, desperation barely concealed under urgency. “Was that when you were my son?”

As Percy met the horrified gaze of Daedalus, he was conscious of only one fact.

This would have been a nice time to die.

Unfortunately, Athena had the impeccable timing that could only originate from malice. The sky remained free of hail, the ground refused to roil in the throes of an earthquake, and the herms of Hermes watched on with no sign of accidentally tipping over onto Percy’s head.

Percy folded. “I’ve never been your son, as far as I know. I’m sorry I pretended otherwise.”

“How did you know that song then?” Apollo pointed an accusatory finger at Percy.

“One of your actual children taught it to me in case of an emergency,” Percy admitted. “I didn’t know it was anything more special than you simply lending a little healing power until the priests were calling me son of Apollo.”

At which point, it was too late.

“Are you not angry?” Hermes asked incredulously at the lack of any destructive events on an epic scale.

“Oh, furious,” Apollo responded. “But also, intensely curious.”

Hermes’s head rotated between Apollo and Percy before the god released an exasperated sigh. “Really Apollon?” he lamented. “Like this?”

Apollo glared at Hermes, but Daedalus broke in before he could reply.

“Why were you surprised to be Icarus?” the inventor asked, countenance distant and closed-off.

“I’m sorry,” Percy pleaded. “I didn’t know how to explain without you deciding I wasn’t your son anymore, or that I’d lost my mind. And so, I just kept pretending, and then I couldn’t say anything.”

I didn’t want to say anything.

Daedalus’ throat bobbed and his teeth ground together audibly, before the man brought up the point Percy had hoped he wouldn’t. “That implies you suddenly received memories of your past life and feared I wouldn’t accept a soul that hadn’t been wiped cleanly enough. But your words give away the lie. You wanted to be my son, not that you already were. It is not that you remembered being Percy – you only remember being Percy.”

“I’ve been Icarus for months now,” Percy insisted.

“But not years?”

Percy stopped, unable to refute the assertion.

Daedalus closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, and then said, “I am deeply disappointed in you right now, Icarus. I will have to think on this.”

Percy nodded, the tang of blood from a bitten tongue flavouring his disappointment.

“Icarus,” Daedalus sighed.

Which was when Percy realised. His head shot up from the drooping posture it had assumed. “You’re still calling me that.”

Daedalus looked away in discomfort but nonetheless muttered. “You’ve simply lost your memories. What sort of father would I be if I disowned you for that?”

Percy beamed at the man.

Daedalus shook his head at Percy’s pleasure before turning towards Apollo and bowing till his head touched the ground itself. “I apologise my lord. I know I have no right to ask this, but I still offer this entreaty – please direct any anger you feel at me alone. My son is young, naïve, and troubled with things he has no knowledge or understanding of. As his father, it was my duty to set him on the right path.”

“Why didn’t you?” Apollo probed, anger just one of the emotions shading his voice.

Daedalus closed his eyes. “I have no excuse. My only defence is that I wished to protect my son. If hiding behind your name protected him from the wrath of the gods I have offended, I was willing to accept any punishment you aimed my way for my daring. If pretending you had once approved of me instead of warning me of the folly of my hubris gained me access to the best healers in the world, I was willing to lie.”       

“Not particularly well,” Apollo noted.

Daedalus flushed, shamefaced. “I have already seen what horrors attempting to evade a god’s anger can bring down on my family. I was willing to try out alternative courses of action to ensure Icarus’s well-being.”

It probably helped that Daedalus had the assurance that were they to fail this time, Percy would simply find himself back in time – with information of all the actions they should not attempt.

Apollo’s molten gold eyes were unreadable when he addressed Hermes, “How far has the curse progressed? And who would have cast it?”

Hermes’s eyes blew wide. “You’re really doing this,” he exclaimed disbelievingly.

“You can see the marks just as well as I can,” was the flat answer.

Hermes placed a bracing hand on Apollo’s shoulder and practically climbed into the other god’s lap in order to lock their eyes together. Whatever unspoken conversation they held was enough to send a breeze fluttering into their corner of the market. The herms rocked about on their bases, looking ready to topple over and crush the interlopers who had infuriated the deity they represented.

Hermes finally withdrew.

Face cast in an eery shadow, the god announced. “The rot is merely the surface. There is a reason I have only seen Persephone successfully cast such a curse. An immortal’s essence sinks into the centre of the soul, and then like a weed, spreads out till it has wrapped the entire soul in a grasp inescapable even by death. The goddess of Spring and of the Underworld. Your curser would have to be someone both skilled at agriculture and with powers over the Underworld.”

“Demeter?” Daedalus asked with a furrowed brow.

Hermes shook his head. “She’s not allowed in the Underworld. Though there are certain similarities to the power – so perhaps someone blessed by her.”

The name of the curser was not the problem. The entire predicament was that it was Kronos residing at Percy’s core. And if the Titan had somehow managed to hijack Percy’s soul and convert it into an involuntary summoning ritual, then before long, Percy would be responsible for releasing a fully materialised Titan into ancient Greece – thousands of years before the gods were ready.  

“And the dissolving of the soul?” Percy pressed. “Would that be possible?”

Hermes smirked. “Certainly. But how in the name of all the gods do you plan to recover?”

That was simple.

He didn’t.

Chapter Text

Apollo got to his feet. “Stop pretending to be mine, and I will,” the god waved a hand in frustration, “think of a punishment.”                
“You’re being remarkably placid about this,” Percy said, apprehensive about the utter calm the god was displaying.
Apollo frowned at Percy. “You do realise I have spent the past month making plans for every single answer to the quagmire you have landed me in?”
Feeling like he was grasping for straws, Percy said, “You feel it would go against your reputation if you killed me now without any reason, since you can’t admit your own mistake at failing to notice I wasn’t your son.” 
“Well, I wasn’t going to kill you,” Apollo stated flatly, “but I’m thinking about it now.”
Daedalus pulled Percy behind his back. “My lord, I assure you, we will refute any assertions that Icarus may be your son,” the inventor assured. “With as much or as little vehemence as you prefer.”
Apollo’s lips twitched, whether in fury or amusement, Percy didn’t know. “All your entreaties have garnered is forbearance, Daedalus. And if you wish to maintain that state of affairs, your name better not be associated with mine any further.”
With that forbidding announcement, Apollo disappeared in a flash of light.
Hermes offered them a crooked smile that revealed sharp canines. “What he said. You’ll find your path ahead very difficult if you anger the God of Travellers.”
Done with levelling his own threat, this god vanished as well. 
When Daedalus and Percy were the only ones in the middle of the so-called temple of Hermes, Percy reiterated. “That went better than I expected.”
“It went exactly as I hoped for,” Daedalus said cynically.
“What?”
Daedalus shot an exasperated glance at Percy. “Really Icarus, have you not learned anything about dealing with the gods? Play on what they value, show yourself as a pitiful supplicant willing to do whatever is required to gain their forgiveness, and then let your name do all the work.”
Percy rubbed his throbbing temple, quite certain this tactic only worked for Daedalus, proven creator of everything provided his head remained attached to his body. “You weren’t actually accepting all the blame. You were playing on his paternal instincts, since he clearly had some to call over his own brother on the chance that I was his son.”
Daedalus shrugged. “I would have accepted punishment had it meant you escaped any, but I doubt my mother would have allowed it. She has a certain trajectory she intends my life to follow – and the Bright One doing away with me for pretending to be his lover is not part of it.”
“Godly politics,” Percy spat in disgust.
Daedalus grinned. “Just politics, son. Now come, tell me everything you do remember – and let me fill in the gaps.”     
The realisation that he was a reincarnation, that this life was one he had lived before death and a dip in the Lethe wiped it from his mind, was something that was easier to digest than all the other possibilities.
Eagerly, Percy revealed the scant few details he’d managed to glean.  And then settled in to listening to his father relate all the man remembered about Icarus’s childhood, before reluctantly moving onto revealing the sporadic glimpses the man had received of the godly legacy's adolescence. 
***
A determined finger poked Percy into consciousness. 
“Apollo,” Percy whined. “Can’t you please stop waking me up so early? Not everyone’s an early riser like you.”
The stunned silence persisted long enough for Percy to properly wake up and recognise just which timeline he was in. 
“What were you to me?” the god whispered, anguished. “Who were you?”
Staring at those blue eyes glimmering with all the shades of the sea under sunlight, Percy couldn’t breathe. 
Fingers scrambled at Percy’s wrist before Apollo’s hand found their grip – one on holding Percy’s arm and the other nestled at the crook of his shoulder. 
“Why would I leave you marks that would last into another life altogether?” Apollo demanded.
Percy’s mouth was parched as a desert that hadn’t seen rain in a hundred years. “Nothing,” he answered. “We were nothing.”
In a voice that shook with suppressed emotion, the god asked, “Who were you?”
At Percy’s continued silence, Apollo threatened, “This refusal to reveal your name doesn’t help your case here.”
“It wouldn’t help,” Percy cried out. “Who I was – you wouldn’t remember.”
“Why not?” the god shouted. “What have I done that makes you hold such a terrible view of me? That you think I could mark your soul and not even remember?”
“You don’t remember,” Percy said sadly.
Apollo scoffed at his own plight. “No, no I don’t.”
As he drew back onto his haunches, darkened curls fell down to cover the god’s downcast eyes. “Why don’t I remember? Do you have an answer for that, Icarus, if you know me so well?”
Percy braced himself onto his elbows, trying to get up, only for an iron-solid hand to press him back down. Percy gasped. 
The weight of the searing hand on his chest was enough to challenge the weight of the sky itself. 
“You never asked what my curse was,” Percy muttered. “You never asked me whether I knew who cursed me and what their intention was.”
“To wipe you from history?” Apollo asked in confusion.
Percy choked on his laughter. “You certainly have a way with words, Apollo. Yes, the objective is to wipe out my history altogether.”
“And that name you call me,” the god pointed out, conflicted enough to not pounce on the specific nature of the words. “It is not one anyone has used for me. Yet it is not meant as an invective.”
Percy grinned helplessly. “One day,” he promised, “the world will know you by this name.”
The god’s throat bobbed with a swallow. “Your thoughts – they were resigned. When my brother asked how you’d return – you didn’t plan to.”
Percy licked his lips, reminded once again of a god’s ability to hear his thoughts. “I … it’s worth it.”
“You’ll die,” Apollo insisted, as if Percy didn’t understand the full ramifications of this decision. “You’ll cease existing – not even in the Underworld. There will be no reincarnation for you, no existence past this life.”
Percy blinked back weary eyes. “Some things are worth it,” he repeated.
Apollo withdrew. In the rosy light sneaking into the main chamber of the temple, the god looked carved from marble. 
Momentarily, half out of his mind from sleep and fear, Percy had the vague thought that he would have liked the chance to sketch Apollo. Then he remembered his lack of talent at art, and his head cleared.  
Freed of the burden of the god’s hands, Percy sat up. 
Both the priest on night duty, and the sole patient sick enough to require an overnight stay at the temple, were fast asleep. For all the good it did, the entire rectangular chamber might as well have been empty. Even the stick of incense meant to be lit all night had burned down to a stub and not been replaced. 
“Who is it,” Apollo hissed, strangely furious.
“No one you can do anything about,” Percy replied without thought.
A fiery hand grabbed Percy by the chin and dragged him towards the god. Percy barely managed to prevent himself from crashing face first into the god by throwing his hands in front of him.
The demigod blinked back tears, convinced that he would be sporting finger marks on his face that day. But it was hard to focus when Apollo was so close that their breaths mingled. When Percy’s hands had rucked up Apollo’s tunic to land on the god’s bare, muscled thighs.
It was probably because Apollo had been munching on ambrosia, but his breath smelled of Percy’s mom’s blue chocolate cookies. Percy wanted to close the remaining distance between them and taste it for himself.
The thought was a cold wash of rain over him. Percy struggled futilely to break free from the grip, but all it did was earn Percy a broken nail as he failed to even scratch Apollo’s hand.
“Listen to me,” Apollo stated slowly.
Percy froze, an animal pinned in a corner.
“You cannot challenge a god like that and expect him not to take umbrage.”
“What are you going to do?” Percy whispered back. “Kill me?”
“You silly child,” Apollo’s lips twisted into a crooked smile. “It is the lucky few who die at my hand. Death is a mercy when I could inflict life-long suffering instead.”
“I might even welcome it were it to entail living a long life,” Percy answered.
Apollo released his grip on Percy’s face.
The demigod inched back. His jaw hurt when Percy repeatedly opened and closed it, but aside from that and the tender skin, there didn’t appear to be any permanent damage. 
Percy snorted at his own wittiness. Permanent.  
“Icarus,” Apollo started, uncertain.
“Let’s just not do this, alright?” Percy asked in exhaustion. “I can’t do this right now. We’ll start anew next time, when I’m not still reeling from new discoveries about everything I thought I knew.”
“You assume you’ll remember it all in your next life?” 
“I know I’ll remember,” Percy stated. 
“Just as you know I won’t,” Apollo declared forlornly. 
Yes, that was kind of the point. 
“Is that something you enjoy?” Apollo questioned. “That you can have innumerable first meetings with everyone you meet. That no one will ever remember you – only the person you present in front of them?”
Rage suddenly threatened to erupt like lava from the caldera of Percy’s mouth. “Don’t you dare,” Percy hissed. “I have spent so long trying to escape the shitfest that is this time looping business, that no one has the right to comment on how I deal with it. Life sucks and then you die, right? Well, escaping undesirable mistakes is the only positive to dying every single time!”
Apollo looked stunned at the vitriol being spat at him. “What time loop?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Percy shouted. “Nothing matters, because it’s just going to return to zero again! And then I’m going to dissolve into goo.”
“Icarus,” Apollo began, hands held out helplessly in front of him.
Percy sucked in a deep breath, trying to push back the sweltering feelings. He brushed back sweaty curls off his forehead, wishing his hair was long enough to tie into a bun. 
“Please let it go,” Percy entreated. “Come back tomorrow if the plight of a stranger matters so much to you. Just – give me this day.”
Apollo took in the absolute mess Percy was and took pity on the demigod. “I won’t let this go,” he warned. “And don’t even think of trying to dissolve your soul before I’m satisfied.” 
 “You say that like dissolving into nothing is the culmination of my life’s ambitions,” Percy said sarcastically. 
The god pursed his lips before vanishing.
Percy heaved a deep sigh before collapsing back onto the ground. With his eyes closed, Percy could pretend he was still asleep, that this was all a dream. That he wasn’t willing to die even before making the ultimate sacrifice.
(That he wanted to die before plunging into the Styx again.)
“He certainly achieved his stated objective. Whether he still wanted it … who knows?”
Percy sniffled. 
He might require Apollo’s help to reach the headwaters of the Styx – to reach a spot of the river so caustic that it would strip his soul into its constituent parts before Kronos’s curse could activate. But he refused to do that to Daedalus.
He’d already left behind one parent with the knowledge that they’d given him the blessing to possibly kill himself.
He wasn’t going to do that to another. 
The sky lightened with the rising Sun, illuminating Percy’s lids with fiery colours. Panting, Percy wiped another handful of sweat off his face. 
It took smelling smoke for Percy to realise the light wasn’t the Sun but the town on fire.
By then, it was too late. 
Perhaps, Percy thought as he jumped to his feet, they shouldn’t have abandoned Prince Whine to his own devices after such devastating news. 
The only consolation was that the smoke inhalation killed Percy before the flames could reach him.

Chapter Text

At this point, Percy was an expert at terrified wake-up calls, speedy escapes, and settling into a home that he could never return to. It didn’t make avoiding Daedalus’ questioning glances any easier.

The man seemed to have a sixth sense for detecting subterfuge – which made sense considering his continued existence was the result of successfully anticipating every one of a psychopath’s whims.

Or maybe Daedalus just regretted being the most absent of parents so much he now overcompensated by keeping a gimlet eye on Icarus.

Either way, Percy’s impending mental breakdown was successfully averted by channelling his frustrations into spars at the palace training grounds instead of screaming into his pillow.

It was only once he felt up to stripping the flesh from his bones (what a joke, how could anyone be ready for a pain of that magnitude?) that Percy took a deep breath, gathered up the tablets he’d inscribed with his Zeusville sketches and the numeric system he’d been lauded for inventing, and set off for Apollo’s temple.

Time having turned back to a point when the town was still mercifully not on fire, the temple looked just the way it always had. A rectangular, wooden building with a small porch in front where supplicants would wait to be allowed inside, the temple was a far sight from the classical Greek temples the world would remember. Technically, the temple wasn’t even called a temple now – but a naos, the dwelling of a god.

Percy came to a stop beside one of the columns lining the walls and waited patiently for his turn. Soon enough, one of the two apprentice priests (who were yet to take the full complement of vows but had still dedicated their lives to the god) turned to Percy.

Prepared, Percy emptied the fist-sized sack full of wheat grains into the bronze plate held out to him. Contribution made, Percy was allowed to enter the temple proper and make personal sacrifices to the god – though of course, if he wished to be certain of Apollo hearing his plea, a fitting donation would encourage the priests to intercede on his behalf.

Once in front of the smooth stone altar, Percy hesitated.

It somehow did not seem right to sacrifice the work of others to gain the attention of a god, especially in a time when people truly believed in these gods – but Percy had no other recourse. He could always go out and hunt a suitable creature, but with his luck, he’d die before even managing to strike a single blow.

Still, at least the architectural plans belonged as much to Apollo as they dd to Ictinus and Callicrates, the original architects of the Parthenon.

Apollo had taken something that existed only dimly within Percy’s brain and transformed it into an actionable blueprint. He’d even changed the rectangular Parthenon to a circular temple plan, apparently the only structure fitting for a god of high stature. Circles, Percy gathered, were Apollo’s personal favourite. His sanctuary at Delphi was set up in a similar vein, and any inference that it was not absolutely perfect was sacrilege.

Stifling the regret, Percy placed his tablets on the altar and focused. The things he meant to say were not for every ear – not when he meant for this to be the last life. Percy couldn’t risk being overheard – which meant he couldn’t just speak.

He had to pray.

The demigod gulped, inordinately abashed. The only times he’d truly prayed till now, without any animosity or desperation guiding his hand, he’d been soundly rejected. He … he couldn’t take that.

He wouldn’t accept that.

Percy poured his experiences, his pleas, the import of what he meant to do, into the thoughts directed towards Apollo.

And then he waited with bated breath.

His tablets stubbornly remained unclaimed.

Percy pursed his lips. Unfortunately, this seemed to require a certain baring of emotions that he hadn’t wished to perform. However, if there was one thing Apollo had proven susceptible to, it was sentiment – whether anger or affection.

Remembering Apollo’s progression from upset to curious to heartbroken – only to make a shift into amused, teasing, and grave, was easy. What wasn’t so easy was divorcing it from Percy’s own emotions of desperation, hope, abjection, affection, and ultimately … resignation.

Twisting their month’s worth of moments together into an arrow aimed to pierce the god’s thick skull, Percy prayed.

And threw.

Done with all in his power, Percy unclasped his hands, opened his eyes, and waited. The tablets remained where they were – but a prickling erupted on the nape of Percy’s neck.

Amused, the demigod bent his head forward, allowing the unbound mass of his hair to shield his face. As the minutes ticked by and the unseen stare just intensified, the amusement curling in Percy’s stomach deepened.   

Pretending he hadn’t noticed anything, Percy got to his feet and went to stand in front of the merrily burning brazier, a tiny smile gracing his face.

There was no work so urgent that could delay a god. Apollo was a god, capable of splitting into innumerable manifestations. If he was making Percy wait, it was because Apollo wished to make the demigod wait.

Soon enough, an apathetic figure materialised on top of the altar. Hair curled in artfully dishevelled ringlets, skin a burnished bronze rippling over lean muscles, posture deliberately careless – Apollo’s very appearance was art. The goblet of nectar held loosely in one elegant hand was a nice touch.

Apollo gazed at Percy from beneath half-lidded eyes. “Such a strange story you wish to convince me of, boy. Should I be impressed at the tale you’ve conceived of to attract my attention, or insulted you dare embellish prosaic events to appear more impressive than you are?”

“Flattered, I hope,” Percy responded. “As for embellishing … I might have done that. Who can control their thoughts, after all? But as to whether the events in question were mundane in the least – well, if you consider them ordinary, you must lead a more exciting life than I had anticipated.”

“What would you know of a god’s life?” Apollo mocked before taking an irreverent sip of nectar.

Percy found himself walking closer. Apollo’s eyes tracked Percy’s every movement – something wolflike in that stare that was ill hidden by the goblet.

“You must have been somewhat convinced, if you graced me with your presence,” Percy pointed out.

Apollo smiled – a sharp little thing Percy could have cut himself on.

“I wouldn’t say that,” the god mused. “Far from convincing me, your prayer was … impudent.”

Percy grinned. “Enough to get you here, though?” he teased.

Now that death was at hand, Percy found it easier to bridge distances that had seemed insurmountable just a few minutes ago.

Apollo shook his head. “Such insolence,” he lamented. “Have you no fear of me? Or do you believe your offerings are somehow enough to stay my wrath?”

Despite the words, the god showed no sign of suddenly cursing Percy. In fact, he appeared more and more intrigued the longer he looked at the demigod.

Deliberately, Percy brushed back a strand of his hair. Apollo’s eyes followed the movement like a hungry lion did prey.

With one final sip, the god placed the goblet on the altar. Now that Apollo’s full attention was on him, Percy found it difficult to breathe.

“You have certain,” Apollo picked through the words carefully, “accoutrements. Ones not generally sported by individuals wholly unknown to me.”

Percy looked at the empty glass on the altar, then at the drop of nectar lingering at the corner of Apollo’s lips.

He swallowed. Hoarsely, he asked, “Who says you don’t know me? Who says that if you were to search in the recesses of your memory, you won’t find traces of me stamped everywhere?”

Apollo’s fist clenched – confusion, yet a strange sort of recognition filling those cerulean eyes. “So, it is real? The disquiet you raise in me – is based on past and not prophecy?”   

This confirmation, however vague, of Percy’s presence in the god’s life, was the last straw. The droplet hovering on Apollo’s mouth glimmered like the finest amber in the land, drawing all of Percy’s attention.

The moment seemed to stretch – a video broken into infinitesimally small snapshots. As if an observer to his own life, Percy saw himself leaning forward – closing the distance between them tiny increment by increment.

Percy tilted his head and kissed Apollo.

He had no assumptions that it was in any way pleasant for the god, but Percy tried. He licked Apollo’s lips, sucked at them, and when Apollo parted his mouth (perhaps in shock), tentatively dipped his tongue in.

Touching Apollo’s tongue, however, was too much. 

Blushing to his roots, Percy drew back. He coughed, covered his mouth with a hand, and looked anywhere but at the flummoxed god in front of him.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I just … I just wanted to do that at least once before I died.”

Wanted to taste his mother’s cookies just once before he died.

“I am …” the god searched for the appropriate words before settling on, “highly offended.”

He sounded highly taken aback.

Then Percy realised just what he had done in a quest for one last taste of home.

“I’m sorry!” the demigod yelped, shaking his hands desperately in front of him. “I’m so sorry! That was an assault, right? I didn’t ask you, didn’t even give you time to move away. I just went in and ...”

Percy quite literally went in and licked up the remnants of nectar from Apollo’s mouth. Instead of doing something sensible like asking whether he could have a bite of the food of the gods himself.

He was such an idiot.

“It’s flattering,” Apollo groped for words. “But also, highly presumptuous of you.” He seemed to be working himself up to a lather. “Who do you think you are, to assume you have the right to touch me?”

“No one,” Percy answered miserably. “I don’t have the right to touch you. You can kill me now.”

Apollo stared – at a complete loss. He rallied enough to say, “I will give you an opportunity. To explain yourself,” before falling back into a bewildered silence.  

Percy gazed at the god helplessly. What was possibly there to say?

Quick as a flash, the god grabbed Percy’s chin and pulled him closer.

Percy’s eyes closed involuntarily. “Oh no,” he moaned. “Please tell me you did not mark me there. Please don’t tell me there are giant handprints all over my throat that every immortal can see.”

Apollo quirked an eyebrow. “I could say that,” he agreed. “But it wouldn’t be true.”

It was enough for the god to remove his hands from Percy’s person, however, and demand, “Now tell me everything. In words.”

“I already told you everything,” Percy muttered mulishly.

Apollo snorted, before looking embarrassed at the sound. “If you knew just what you told me, you wouldn’t have apologised for a simple kiss.”

Percy gawked. What?

At Apollo’s uncompromising, inquiring stare, Percy could only repeat, “What?”

An amused smirk twitched at Apollo’s lips. “Icarus,” the god said, “the strength of your prayer is … really something. You pour the whole of your heart into it. It would be enough to breathe life into a fading god.”

Sombreness was a sand dune in Percy’s desertifying sea. “Is it enough for you to strip the life from me?”

Apollo froze. “Is that why you prayed to me?”

Percy shrugged, regretting bringing up the matter. But it was important to get this resolved before Apollo had the chance to get attached – before he had the chance to turn into someone who would put a shielding hand over Percy’s face to protect him from the Styx.

There was something raw about Apollo when he responded, “I do not generally make a habit of killing my lovers, however forgotten they might be.”

“We’re not lovers,” Percy refuted. “That we’re not strangers is a quirk of fate. That you’re the only one who I can think of to help me with this is … your misfortune. But something that must be done.”

“Oh,” Apollo quizzed, cruelty radiating off his body. “So, you would have me murder someone I don’t even remember, who shines with my marks, not because I chose to do it, but because you tricked me into it?”

That brought Percy short. “It would hurt less,” he tried to explain, only to be cut off.

“If you believe it will hurt at all, you have no right to ask it of me,” Apollo hissed.

Confronted with the truth of the statement, Percy found himself at a loss.

Finally, Percy tried to make amends. “If I,” he paused to clear his throat. “If I tell you everything – then will you help?”

“Help you kill yourself?” Apollo shot back venomously. “it’s as easy as jumping off a cliff, if you’re that interested.”

Percy huffed out a laugh. “I’ve done that. Drowning, burning, breaking my neck, getting stabbed, even my heart stopping at one point. It’s the permanence I crave, not the act itself.”

“That’s a lie,” Apollo said, though he sounded hesitant.

“That I crave it?” Percy shot back. “Perhaps. That it’s necessary? No.”

Apollo sat down on the altar, somewhat shaky. “Fine. Tell me. Tell me all about the impossibilities of your existence.”

And Percy did.

By the time he was done, Percy’s throat was hoarse and his face felt sunburnt from the strength of Apollo’s stare.

Finally, after an interminable stretch of moments, Apollo inquired solemnly, “What makes you think the dip in the Styx will work now when it didn’t before?”

Percy’s head shot up, stunned. “You’re going to do it?”

Apollo nodded. “You’re right. Stopping the Crooked One is more important than preserving your life.” 

“Um,” Percy smoothed out his clothes in bewilderment at the sudden about-turn. He was, dare he think it, a little disappointed. Despite it being his own plan, Percy had somewhat hoped for a few more protestations.

Yet, wasn’t it to prevent just that outcome that Percy wasn’t building up to a life-threatening favour? Because he didn’t wish for Apollo to be invested enough to care to subvert the fate that lay in wait for Percy?

“Well, the headwaters are more dangerous, right?” Percy guessed. “Presumably, they will act faster – and dissolve my soul before the curse takes hold.”

“The curse of the Styx versus the Curse of the Crooked One,” Apollo mused. “I wonder which one will prove superior.”

“If you remember this event, you’ll know,” Percy told the god wryly.

***

As things turned out, Apollo didn’t remember.

Staring at the lightening sky from within the enclosure of the Labyrinth, soul raw and bleeding from his latest encounter with the corrosive waters of the Styx, Percy was the only one to remember.

Chapter Text

The dip in the Styx was Percy’s last resort. Neither Hermes not Apollo had known how to remove the curse from him – and Apollo had shown no hesitation in believing every single loop was just a means for Kronos to return to power.

Percy’s chest itched, like a thousand fire ants were burrowing into his skin. It was all he could do to not scratch his chest bloody – to not scratch inside, grab the worm of Kronos hidden inside him, and wrench it out.

But all his efforts to do just that had failed.

Percy had no notion of what to do. He’d staked his all on this one venture, built his house on the waterlogged shores of a flooded river.   

Now he was a broken branch drifting along the waters, tossed into the air and then dragged underwater by the rapids. He was rudderless – just a stone’s throw from drowning.

He crumpled.

Percy turned around and buried his head in the bundle of rags serving as a makeshift pillow. The muffled nature of everything from within the protective cocoon was soothing – as soothing as anything could be after the failure of all his plans. 

“Icarus,” Daedalus’ sleepy voice roused Percy from his brooding.

The demigod sniffed, pushed all his despondency into a box, and wiped his face on the rags. “I’m up,” he called out hoarsely.

“Good, good,” Daedalus mumbled absently. “Today will be a very busy day – the most important day of our lives, if I have my way.”

It would be just one more of the innumerable first days of Percy’s increasingly short life – to be ended when Kronos enacted the first ever prison break from Tartarus and plunged the world into civil war.

But Percy couldn’t afford to think of that. He’d lamented enough – it was time to pull up his metaphorical pants and get things done.

Again.

***

“Father,” Percy broached the topic apprehensively.

“Hmm?” Daedalus didn’t look up from his perusal of the tablets containing details of the finances of Kamikos.

Percy swallowed. “I understand that what I am about to say boggles the mind and might seem the result of an overactive imagination combined with a healthy dose of madness – but can you trust me enough to ascertain the facts of the matter for yourself?”

Daedalus looked up in surprise. “Whatever do you mean, Icarus?”

Percy fidgeted, wringing a bit of his tunic between nervous hands. “Can you build a device to see the animus? And use it to see the state of my soul?”

Daedalus stiffened. “And why would you require something like that?”

Percy gave a twitchy little laugh. “Well, you see – it’s the funniest thing. Or perhaps tragic. I’ve been cursed – and every attempt to subvert it seems destined to failure. And so, I have come to you. Again. In the hopes you’ll devise a plan that will finally free me.” 

Daedalus’ eyes slipped shut in sorrow. “It was perhaps foolish of me to presume being taken hostage would be the end of your trials. If there is one thing my mother has never been known for, it is forgiveness. Why would she not take out the grudge she nurtures for me on you?”

Percy ought to have corrected him, revealed that Athena had nothing to do with this bit of misfortune. But he’d died too many times to forgive any of the gods involved. He hadn’t even forgiven Apollo, and that was the god Percy depended on the most to ensure Icarus died a fitting death.

Daedalus sniffed to clear his blocked nose before getting up. “Alright. If there is a curse on your soul, there is nothing left for us to do but bring it to the fore – and excise it.”

Percy nodded, willing to give himself over wholeheartedly to Dadealus’ care.

It took a few weeks – time that could have been reduced to a fraction of itself but which Percy found himself clinging to like a limpet.

He should have been subtly phasing out of Daedalus’ life. Should have been making his upcoming death more palatable for the inventor. Instead, Percy allowed the man to labour under the impression that Icarus’s death wasn’t inevitable.

Finally, the apparatus was ready – and Percy received the third of a one-of-a-kind MRI reading of his soul.

Despite intensely scrutinising it, Percy couldn’t come to a conclusion. Was it wishful thinking or reality?

Was the swelling less pronounced?

And if so, was it due to his body’s defences breaking down – or because the Styx had stripped off the topmost layer of Percy?

Was Percy’s plan truly feasible, only requiring multiple passes?

The tablet slipped through trembling fingers and smashed into pieces. The wet clay smeared on top of the pieces, splattered around the debris, resembled the flesh of some earthen creature.

“Icarus?” Daedalus cried out in alarm. “It’s fine! I’ll solve this. Do not worry.”

Percy shook his head shakily. He … he couldn’t do this.

Not as many times as it would require to reach the kernel of Kronos hidden inside him.

He couldn’t.

***

Percy gazed unseeingly at the waves lapping at the shore below. Perched as he was on a cliff overlooking the sea, it afforded him a great vantage point with which to keep track of any visitors. A vantage point Percy was currently wasting.

The dancing aquamarine waves, with caps of foam, could have been drunk revellers at a New Year’s Party. The flash of silver fins could have signified alien spacecraft alighting on Earth. The rocks on the beach could have been an entire army of gods in disguise, waiting to drag a nereid ashore.

Percy wouldn’t have noticed.

He was too busy screaming a litany of creative curses at the void – this time, making certain that nowhere did he mention a single name.

Which was why it came as a surprise when a shocked voice proclaimed behind him, “I can’t believe it. Helios was right.”

Percy was not ashamed of what he did next. Quick as lightning, he twisted around, pushed up onto his hands, kicked out with one leg, and did a half cartwheel to come to his feet.

The shocked figure of Apollo, sporting a shoe print on his snowy-white tunic, filled Percy with a strange sort of pleasure. Vindictively, Percy thought that any god who popped up suddenly behind a demigod should expect a violent response. If they wanted nice, calm, pleasant welcomes – the gods probably shouldn’t go around giving monsters a reason to prey on every demigod they encountered.

“You kicked me!” Apollo exclaimed, stunned.

“You surprised me,” Percy pointed out. “But my apologies if I hurt you.”

In short – it’s your fault, since I doubt a simple kick did anything to damage your marble countenance.      

Percy didn’t know why he was being so combative – leftover embarrassment perhaps? Or leftover hurt? It was easier to not waste time on introspection when there were so many better things to do.

“I’m not hurt,” Apollo instantly denied. Before querying hesitantly, “Do you always react thus to being surprised?”

“I could have toppled over the edge of the cliff,” Percy responded wryly. In fact, it was precisely to prevent that eventuality that Percy had taken a seat a considerable distance from the edge.

Apollo’s eyes widened. “We would not wish for that.”

Then, like iron to the lodestone of Percy, Apollo’s gaze flickered to Percy’s jaw. Then, lower, to the point where his shoulder met his neck. Inexorably, those golden irises traced a path across the rest of Percy’s body and came to a stop at his wrist.

Pre-emptively, before the god could arrive at another erroneous conclusion, Percy charged, “Do you all just sit there sipping nectar and gossiping about me? All I have done since arriving here is wallow in my own misery – and already, I am the talk of Olympus?”

“Don’t overestimate your importance,” Apollo sneered reflexively. “An inflated ego will not prevent you from shattering into pieces were I to push you off.”

Instead of dropping Percy into the depths of despair at yet another reminder of his failures, Apollo’s words took him back to Daedalus’ workshop, to a glimpse of godly power denied him for safety.

“Youthful curiosity,” Percy whispered.

Ignoring Apollo’s curious look, Percy tracked down that train of thought to its inevitable conclusion. “You said you experimented with operating on souls,” Percy breathed out, excitement a live wire thrumming through his veins. “You said it was too dangerous because you couldn’t guarantee you wouldn’t destroy me – but that doesn’t mean you can’t.” 

Apollo looked taken aback. “I am quite certain I have never so much as spoken to you before this moment. Let alone revealed the details of any such experiment.”

“Yes, yes,” Percy scorned. “I’m stuck in a time loop, there’s a curse on my soul, if we don’t get it out, a horrible monster will get released from prison. Can we get on to the important part – break into my soul!”

“You are being too forward!” Apollo thundered.

Percy drew back from where he’d excitedly leaned into the god, astounded. “Because I’m volunteering for being chopped up into infinitesimally tiny pieces when you fail to preserve the integrity of my soul?”

Apollo opened and closed his mouth repeatedly before managing to push out uneasily, “I do not believe you understand what you are asking for.”

“Since the alternative is repeatedly burning up in the waters of the Styx,” Percy retorted, “I’ll take that risk.”

Apollo ran a hand over his unsettled face. “You are … a troubled individual. Possibly not in your right mind. I am … not going to accept anything you state.”

Percy crossed his arms, as much a defensive gesture as it was accusatory. “But do you doubt my sincerity?”

Apollo’s face took on a distinctly hunted expression. “Why do you ask that?”

“Because if you hear my words, and not merely what the boy in your imagination speaks, you’ll know I mean it when I say it,” Percy announced, deceptively calm. “If I can find no other recourse, I will jump into the Styx. I will burn my soul into nothing layer by agonising layer.”

There was silence for a long few seconds before Apollo burst out, “What is it to me what tortures you inflict on yourself?”

“Everyone has the power to affect change, whether positive or negative,” the demigod declared softly. “When you have the opportunity to lend your help without harming yourself, and you don’t, then the ensuing consequences are partially on you.”

“That’s a blame I’m willing to take,” Apollo agreed dismissively.

“Even if your inaction is what release Kronos from his prison?”

Apollo froze. “What did you say?” the god asked, threat in every line of his body.

Percy stared back uncompromisingly.

The god strode forward, grabbed Percy’s head just above his ears, and locked their eyes together.

All of a sudden, Percy was overwhelmed by reminiscence, by the memories he’d forgotten he ever possessed and the ones he’d done his best to forget. Occasionally, his mind would linger – creating a curious collection of snapshots.

His mother hugging him, Grover tackling him, Annabeth pulling out off her cap and fading into visibility, Tyson giving him a toothy smile, the Oracle spewing green smoke, a teenage Apollo tossing his keys into the air, an aged Poseidon repelling the forces of Oceanus … and then scenes from every single iteration of Icarus’s life Percy had lived.

Apollo pored over everything to his satisfaction – which only arrived when they came a full circle to Percy beginning to remember the start of this invasion of his mind.

Apollo withdrew, horror and shock warring for supremacy on his face.

“Now will you help?” Percy growled.

Apollo gulped, looking ready to flee.

Percy snatched at the god’s wrist, refusing to let him depart with promises to return on a later day that would never arrive.   

Apollo shuddered. “You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he protested.

“Will it hurt more than the Styx?” Percy demanded.

“Hurt me, yes!” the god exclaimed. 

“Will it be worth it to stop Kronos?”

Apollo stared at him with watery eyes.          

“Don’t dwell on the possibility of failure,” Percy coaxed. “Don’t you see? This is an opportunity to try – to keep on trying until we succeed.”

“But what would be the cost of that success?” Apollo implored.

“Don’t be like this,” Percy drew back in disappointment. “Just because you saw a few memories, you suddenly feel reluctant to possibly kill a person you were willing to throw off a cliff a few minutes ago?”

Apollo rubbed at the wrist Percy had caged, eyeing the appendage like it had somehow been contaminated by the mortal touch.

“You have a very low opinion of yourself,” the god murmured, “if you believe anyone can know the whole of you and not love you.”

“Hey now,” Percy backtracked, feeling caught in treacherous quicksand. “We’re not lovers, we’re barely even friends.”

Apollo’s lips parted before deciding better and stretching into a trembling, miserable little smile. “Right. Technically, we’re not even acquaintances. Just half a step above strangers.” 

Percy waited, wondering if the god would agree to his proposition.

Apollo closed his eyes. “I’m going to regret this,” he mumbled before gesturing to the bed that suddenly materialised on the ground. “Go ahead. Lie down.”

Percy did as he was told. Now that the moment was at hand, however, he couldn’t deny the apprehension turning his bones to lead.

“Why’d you even practice something like this?” he asked, desperate for any distraction.

Apollo chuckled wetly even as he clambered up next to Percy. “It wasn’t for any altruistic purpose, I assure you. Quite the opposite.”

Percy quirked his eyebrows questioningly.

Apollo laughed disbelievingly. “I suppose you’re the one mortal I can tell. You’re determined to wipe yourself out of existence, after all.”

An ice-cold hand gently lowered Percy’s tunic to his waist – baring his chest to the god. Who sniffled alarmingly before revealing, “You mortals die so easily – and once gone, you’re forever out of reach. Hades is not one to brook interference in his realm from anyone but father, after all. The only way to capture even the slightest of your essence is to trap you aboveground – be it in the stars or a plant watered with your life.”

The cold of Apollo’s hand leached the heat from Percy’s own heart – slowing it down into quiescence.

Meanwhile, the god’s lyrical words sank into Percy’s mind and subsumed everything.

“But there has always been one bond between a mortal and a god that can never be broken,” Apollo continued, voice deathly soft.

“Prayer,” Percy guessed, mind a soft, anchorless ship floating along with the waves Apollo’s presence engendered.

Apollo smiled, a predatory, cruel thing that sent goosebumps along Percy’s body. “What is prayer, but the cry of a soul released into the void, begging for anyone to come in and take?”

The smile disappeared the very next moment. “Why can’t I burrow in further and just snatch a part of your soul for myself?”

And Percy understood. His jaw throbbing with the proximity to the person who’d marked him, Percy breathed out in absolution, “If a part of you lingers on me, why can’t a part of me linger in you?”

Apollo closed his eyes and released a choked-out laugh. “I’ll try to make it painless,” he promised.

Percy’s eyes slipped closed.

Chapter Text

Icarus looked straight into the bearded face of the judge and declared, “I’d like to be reincarnated, now, thank you.”

Rhadamanthus looked around the tent in search of whoever was being addressed before the realisation struck. This soul was addressing … him?

His blue eyes widened. “You’re in the wrong line, I’m afraid. Reincarnation is … somewhere else.”

“There isn’t another line,” Icarus stated, full of self-confidence.

Rhadamanthus leaned back against his poplar wood chair and folded his arms. “I’m on break,” he said flatly.

“I know,” Icarus agreed. “That’s why I came now.”

Sharp eyes narrowed in suspicion. “And why would you approach me without my fellow judges? We are a court – a trio that dispenses judgement together.”

“But it’s not judgement I’m after,” Icarus pointed out.

Rhadamanthus looked at the canvas tent, the rickety table with papers, the three uncomfortable chairs, and the skeletal guards standing at the corners, and then back at the soul standing in front of him.

“I see,” he said dryly. 

Icarus grinned disarmingly. “Come on,” he coaxed. “I’ve been here for so long – isn’t it time I got to leave?”

“Unfortunately,” the judge intoned flatly, “only the souls in Elysium get to reincarnate.”

Icarus wagged a finger. “That’s not completely true. I’ve heard that if condemned souls accept the reality of their crime and truly repent, they are allowed one more chance as well.”

“But you dwell neither in Elysium nor in the Fields of Punishment,” Rhadamanthus informed him. “In fact,” the judge continued, beginning to look intrigued, “You dwell in Asphodel. How did you even manage to gather enough willpower to leave?”

Icarus laughed, hiding the apprehension in his breast. “Really, my lord. Back when I died, the only people who went anywhere but Asphodel were either descended from the gods or their lovers. What chance did I have of landing anywhere else?”

“If it was an opportunity to go somewhere else you were after, why wait this long for judgement?” Rhadamanthus probed. “Why come here now, not for a better afterlife, but for a new life?”

“Asphodel is where I would end up,” Icarus admitted, unashamed. He had never done anything worth Elysium – and hopefully, nothing heinous enough to deserve Punishment either. His only selling point, as the youngsters called it, was his willpower.

Icarus had borne the weathering of Minos’s court, the tarnishing of the Underworld – he’d lost pieces, had his rough edges sliced off to fit a mould.

But Icarus had never stopped fighting.  

He’d always persevered – when one grew up a hostage in a madman’s court, with every day a misery dependant on the whims of the royal family, with no hope of escape, the only thing left was to endure. Persistence would pay off.

That it had yet to do so was a minor matter.

“Were you not waiting for your father?” Rhadamanthus asked, finally recalling who the youth standing in front of him was.

It was Icarus’s turn to be unimpressed. “If father were to come here, he’d have arrived a long time ago. And it’s not as if he will go anywhere but Punishment with your brother as one of the judges.”

Rhadamanthus grimaced. “There are more than just the three of us here. There is every possibility that Daedalus will receive a fair judgment.”

Icarus smiled sadly. “My father will go to the Fields of Punishment,” he admitted. “The only thing left to be determined is the severity of his punishment.”

If Icarus remained in the Underworld, every possibility of ever reuniting with his father would be lost. It might have taken a thousand years, but he had finally come to that realisation. It had taken even longer to resolve to do something about it, but that was alright.

Daedalus was the genius in their little family of two. And a family of two it was – Icarus was dimly aware that he must have had a mother, but the memories of the woman had long since been stripped away by the winds blowing through Asphodel. And the legacy refused to acknowledge any of the immortals he was related to as family. They might have been his gods – but they were not family.

(It had hurt. The glowing beings that visited him might have pled for forgiveness, but their actions did nothing but inflict torture. They were not family.

Family didn’t hurt you.)

Icarus had only ever had his stubbornness to his credit – that, and his impetuosity, which often led him into more trouble that even his father could rescue him from.

Thankfully, this didn’t appear to be one of those times.

“You’ll have to drink from the Lethe,” Rhadamanthus warned.

“Of course,” Icarus agreed, triumph a blazing bonfire in his chest.

“You’ll forget whatever it is that prompted you to make this trek,” Rhadamanthus pressed. “Whatever you cherished enough to protect you from the listless despondency of Asphodel, you’ll forget it. And the only way you will ever recover it is if you manage to make it to the Isles of the Blest.”

Icarus held the judge’s eyes despite every molecule of him quaking at the temerity. It was practically impossible to gaze into eyes that so resembled Minos’s – but Icarus could be brave. Bravery was just persisting in the face of fear.

Making a display of his determination in front of Rhadamanthus was worth meeting the man’s eyes.

Rhadamanthus shook his head. “It was a sorry business,” he finally admitted gruffly. “You were Cretan – a member of society. That your father be incarcerated for his crimes was just – that you be interred along with not.”

“Interred?” Icarus echoed. Unless he was mistaken about its meaning, did the word not signify burial? That too, one with all the requisite funeral rites.

Icarus had died in the ocean – he doubted there had even been a body to bury. It had taken months for his father to sacrifice enough bronze sticks to fill Charon’s fist – months that Icarus had spent haunting the shores of the Styx, stuck in a pained haze that made it impossible to distinguish the rock in front of his face from the river at his back.

Stuck until the daemon finally had his payment and deigned to escort him to the Fields of Asphodel.

Really, the dead these days had it so easy – currency was everywhere. And accepted everywhere. No daemon would stand around arguing that just because six oboloi were the standard, didn’t mean the bronze sticks were enough to fill his fist. And a fistful of bronze meant a fistful.

“Your birth was your funeral,” Rhadamanthus answered cryptically, before changing the subject. “Very well. Off to the Lethe you go. The next person to be born will be you.”

Icarus bowed. “Thank you,” he said fervently.

Rhadamanthus’s lips twisted in a bitter little smile. “Do not thank me yet, boy. You wish for the Isles of the Blest? Only suffering gets you there, child. Only lifetimes of suffering.”

***

Percy woke up after what was quite possibly the most restful sleep he’d had in months. It didn’t alter the fact that he woke up back in the Labyrinth and not in the void of Chaos – that is, if he had to wake anywhere.

His heart throbbed, aching for a piece he’d left behind in another life altogether. Shivering with a cold he could never be free of, Percy touched his chest, unreasonably convinced that his fingers would simply sink through bone to touch the wound.

Apollo had been gentle. He’d stretched and pulled at fraying ends, sliced with swift strokes into a numb spirit, and cauterised weeping essence with a blaze of light.

He’d carved a piece of Percy away.

And Percy had died.

Died with the kernel of Kronos exposed but still present.

Percy could still remember the recoil of horror, the trembling of nerveless fingers as Apollo was confronted with a reality he’d never really believed.

Remember the constricting embrace of a Titan determined to develop inside Percy until the demigod was a hollow shell of a person – until Percy Jackson was merely a suit for Kronos to discard.

As Percy lay on his pallet, his mind whirred with increasingly convoluted plans until he’d run circles around his own self. But Annabeth was the one with a talent for crafting intricate tactics.

Percy – Percy was simply good at seeing an opportunity and seizing it.

“Father?” he called out.

“Yes, Icarus?” Daedalus asked absently from where he was folding up his own sheets.

“Will you bless me?”

The man chortled. “Bless you? Why, are you intending to embark on a life of crime?”

At Percy’s sombre silence, the man calmed down. In a softer voice, Daedalus replied, “You need not even ask, Icarus. You always have my blessings.”

Percy tilted his head to bring the older man’s figure into sight, pondering over the strange twists of fate.

The Fates had once knitted a sock for him that would fit a giant – or multiple feet. Had they known then? Had they already spun the thread of Percy’s life and decided it looked better twisted into tangled loops?

The snip of the yarn had echoed across lanes. Would the end of his life also echo through time?

Throat swollen with emotion, memories of the last time he’d asked a similar question threatening to overwhelm him, Percy gasped out, “Even if it is a blessing to swim in the River Styx?”

Would the damage to Kronos’s wounded soul from a dip in the Styx be enough to weaken the Titan in the 21^st century? Even if it didn’t, the matter wouldn’t be up to Percy anymore. They would simply have to fight on for two more years, keep Olympus intact until Nico grew old enough to assume the mantle.

In some ways, Percy was fiercely glad that they had ventured to the Underworld. Nico would be protected there by his father, would have the Styx to take advantage of the invulnerability Percy had failed at. 

In other ways … well, Percy had been destined to die at sixteen, anyway. What were a few days here and there? What was sorrow in the face of inevitability?

“You won’t die, Icarus,” Daedalus refuted the mere possibility vehemently. “We will leave here together – and even if Minos sends soldiers to retrieve you today, there is always the next visit. I will keep the wings ready, and the moment we are together, we will make our escape.”

Percy twisted his lips into a mirthless smile, trying so hard to be reassuring but knowing he was failing by a mile. “Of course, father. It was simply a question.”

Daedalus’ brow furrowed in consternation. “A dangerous question. How could I possibly give permission for something inherently fatal for you?”

Percy pushed himself into a sitting position, only to regret it instantly. Vertigo spun his head into a million directions, splitting reality into kaleidoscopic, gossamer thin layers.

His vision flickered.

“Icarus!” Daedalus shouted dimly before strong hands gripped Percy’s arms.

The earth was tilting, swaying like it was a ship on stormy waters. Percy swung with it – anchored only by the mortal hands of a man who would go on to invent his own form of immortality.

Daedalus deposited Percy back on the ground. “You’re ill,” he concluded.

“No,” Percy moaned in denial. He wasn’t ill, he was suffering from a terminal injury to his soul.

Without any doubt or hesitation, Percy knew that this was it. This would be the life to end it all because whatever Apollo had done? It had irrevocably damaged Percy’s soul.

When Percy had joked about the god destroying the integrity of his soul, he hadn’t meant it – or comprehended the terrible reality of the statement.

Percy’s soul was literally flaking away.

It was what he’d wished for, but now that he’d discovered the horrible consequences of it, Percy found himself regretting it.

“You have to prepare the wings,” Percy insisted, panting.

His clammy skin, the heat wracking his flesh, the bitterness in his mouth – it only signified one thing. The infection in his soul had ratcheted up until it affected even his body.

And Percy’s mortal flesh, his immortal soul – weren’t merely carriers for Kronos’s recovering spirit. Just as Percy couldn’t reach inside and tug Kronos out, Kronos couldn’t tear his way outside.

The titan had to wait for Percy’s soul to fail, for the prison of the demigod’s essence to crack – and Percy had done just that.

Dazedly, Percy wondered – how many lifetimes had it been? How many times had Percy summoned Kronos to the world, however inadvertently? Was it enough for the Titan to create his own body? Enough for him to possess someone willing to share their body with him?

Was Kronos a caecilian, even now nibbling on the flesh of its nurturer for sustenance?

“I don’t have to do anything but take care of you right now,” Daedalus’ voice broke into Percy’s calamitous ruminations.

“You have to,” Percy gasped out. “Minos will kill us today. If you don’t finish it, we’ll both die.” 

Daedalus couldn’t die – not now. Not now when he was supposed to live through everything – live through Minos’s comeuppance.

Percy wished he’d pressed Nico further on the topic of the man’s afterlife, instead of settling for the assurance that it wasn’t too horrible. Somehow, he’d imagined that an afterlife occupation as Hades’ civil engineer wouldn’t be too intolerable.

Why had Percy not asked about Icarus and Perdix? Not inquired about the people Daedalus had been most invested in meeting? Nico had not volunteered the information – and Percy had let it slip through his fingers.

Just like he was letting this time slip through his fingers.

“Go,” Percy yelled.

A sharp pain stabbed his head, making him screw his eyelids shut.

“Was that the bargain?” Daedalus asked dangerously. “That he’d let you be with me for my last day alive – but in return, you’d ingest a poison that would spell your death as well?”

Instead of making any false refutations that would ultimately not be borne out, Percy repeated, “You have to finish the wings.”

Daedalus took a deep rattling breath before folding “Fine, I will complete the wings. But you must rest.”

Relief slid through Percy’s veins, relaxing tense muscles until he lay limp against the ground. He released a louder than usual breath as answer, all he could manage in the face of the respite.

Percy must have dozed off, because it felt like no time at all when Daedalus was shaking him awake.

“Come,” the man said brusquely. “I need to stick the wings onto you.”

Laboriously, Percy got to his feet before stumbling his way to the table. Once there, though, he couldn’t focus on the present. His mind kept slipping into hazy daydreams of a beautiful garden, full of spring flowers that could grow nowhere but at Olympus. An ethereal but mournful music played as a gentle soundtrack to the scene – lulling Percy to sleep.

It could have been minutes, or it could have been hours when Percy finally roused enough to mumble, “I need to do your wings too.”

“Icarus,” Daedalus muttered helplessly, but Percy was determined.

He shoved off the table he was bent over and then went about attaching the entirely too heavy pair of wings to the inventor’s back. He wouldn’t deny it – the only thing that made it possible was that he’d already done it so often.

Who knew?

Repetition truly did lead to perfection.

“The hot air!” Percy remembered with a start.

“I’ll manage it,” Daedalus assured, even though his stooped shoulders revealed just how difficult the endeavour would be.

“I’ll help,” Percy volunteered, feeling better after the long stretches of sleep.

“No,” Daedalus started, but Percy had already walked over to the forge and begun pumping the bellows.

The end of their occupancy of the labyrinth came with as resounding a clash as always. While Percy and Daedalus struggled to lift the cover from over the receptacle they’d stored the hot air from the forge in, Minos and his minions went about breaking down the door.

How they escaped was beyond Percy’s comprehension. He only recovered his senses once they were already in the air – which was yet another mistake Percy couldn’t help but repeat.

“We’ll land on the first island,” Daedalus shouted.

That would probably sound more reassuring to someone who hadn’t made this journey often enough to realise that the closest piece of land outside of Minos’s control was Kamikos.

Nevertheless, Percy flapped his arms harder. He had to make it through the fatiguing journey, convince Apollo to give him a lift to the headwaters of the Styx or into the Underworld altogether, and then stretch out his own death throes long enough for Kronos to get incised out of him.

It might not prove fatal for the Titan – but it would be debilitating enough to forestall his return. Hopefully, the damage would prove disorienting enough that the pieces of Kronos would get carried along by the river into the Underworld, and in due course, into Tartarus itself.

Unfortunately, these were all pipe dreams. Even as he caught a moment’s break on the wings of a current, Percy could feel his splintering soul break off in another chunk.

It sent a fresh bout of agony throbbing through him.

Percy spiralled.

“Icarus, move your arms!” Daedalus shouted desperate instructions.

Percy tried – he flapped and flapped even when his vision went white.

However, this wasn’t one of those timelines where their wings had received ample amounts of time to dry. It wasn’t even one of those timelines Percy had hoped to create where the fragile wax joint between human and wing was replaced with sturdy hot glue.

Feathers flew off into the air.

The white foam of the sea overtook Percy’s sight until the absence of colour was all he knew. 

Chapter Text

Percy woke up on the ground.

It was perplexing.

Now, one privy to the last one year of his life would think, “Par for the course.”

No, the perplexing thing wasn’t that he woke up despite a fragmenting soul or that it was on the ground.

The surprise was that he woke up on a grassy field with a canopy of tree branches shielding him from the blazing incandescent rays of the Sun.

Instead of the four walls of the Labyrinth.

Despite the muggy heat, though, Percy shivered.

Instinctively seeking the closest source of warmth, Percy rolled over and right into someone’s lap.

“What do you think you’re doing?” an outraged voice cried out.

The voice might have been muffled through the layers of cotton plugging Percy’s ears, but it was still recognizable.

“Can I just stay here a moment?” Percy mumbled into Apollo’s tunic.

“In my lap?” the god asked incredulously.

Percy nodded. “It hurts,” he whispered, somehow certain that the small plea would convince the god.

He was right.

Apollo settled down however mutinously. Before long, his fingers commenced tracing arcane patterns along Percy’s scalp.

The demigod relaxed. The lassitude seeping through him could not possibly be natural, but it was comfortable. And comforting, in a way nothing had been for quite some time. The cessation of pain was enticing enough that Percy even disregarded the utter incongruity of the situation.   

But Percy was a demigod. There was only so long he could take peace before chills of apprehension made it impossible to enjoy himself anymore.

Reluctantly, Percy twisted so that he could look up into Apollo’s serene features. The god gazed back confidently, unashamed at having been caught staring.

Percy found it hard to look away from fathomless eyes that flashed the bright blue of treacherous seas, strangely convinced that to do so would be to plunge into an endless canyon.

“Why did you save me?” Percy asked, voice barely above a whisper.

When Apollo replied, it was in an equally hushed voice, seemingly as eager to preserve the tranquil atmosphere as Percy. “I had a dream. And then I realised I’d never gone to sleep in the first place.”

Percy looked searchingly into that inscrutable face. “Does this mean you … remember something?”

Long, elegant fingers tapped their way across Percy's chest before coming to a stop right above his heart.

Calmly, as if he wasn’t discussing the end of someone's life, Apollo queried, “Do I need to remember something in order to recognise my own handiwork?”

“Signs of your handiwork have never stirred you to the extent of saving me from drowning before,” Percy pointed out sardonically.

Warmth seeped deeper into Percy's body from where the god’s fingers rubbed circles over his chest.

“No,” Apollo pondered. “I don't believe it has. Yet,” the god continued philosophically, “That which never changes is no life at all. And no one can deny that we are both still alive.”

Percy gulped. “Did it … did you?”

“You'll have to specify your exact question, love,” Apollo mocked.

That had the intractable, contrary spirit inside Percy rising to the fore. “Did you swallow the piece of my soul you were supposed to be holding in reserve?” he challenged.

A golden flush rose to cover Apollo’s cheekbones. “I resent the implication,” he said stiffly.

“But do you deny the allegation?” Percy asked shrewdly.

Apollo’s hand clenched into a fist before the god forcibly relaxed his fingers. Gently, at complete odds with his earlier agitation, Apollo smoothened out the wrinkles he had created in Percy’s tunic.

“Considering that you died,” Apollo stated firmly, “I do believe it is only to be expected.”

“I’m not certain gobbling up my soul every time I die is doing me many favours.”

“It was just the once!” Apollo shouted back before snapping his eyes shut. Percy studied the clear signs of the god struggling to reign in his temper before making a decision.

“Hey,” Percy tried to soften his voice, “I’m not blaming you for anything. So, you panicked and drew back for a moment. Even if you hadn’t, the Crooked Once would have found some other opportunity to capitalize on.”

Apollo’s face screwed up into a pained grimace. “You … you really do not understand anything.”

“Then explain it to me,” Percy encouraged.

“I was helping Melpomene compose a song,” the god burst out. “Perfectly tragic and full of pathos, just the way she likes it. Except, just when we should have hit our stride – all I can feel is this segment of humanity attempting to meld with me. All I can play is something entirely too maudlin and riddled with failure – no appropriate catharsis. Just wretched death.”

The fury and fear on Apollo’s face shouldn’t have made him more attractive – but his flushed cheeks, panting chest, dishevelled hair, and frantic expression just made Percy want to touch him.

He didn’t resist.

Percy raised a hand and cupped the god’s cheek.

Apollo froze.

“Hey,” Percy coaxed. “We knew it was a long shot.”

Apollo crumpled.  “I can't fix this,” he moaned, clutching at Percy’s hair desperately.

Percy hid the wince at the resultant sting in his scalp, and said reassuringly, “I don't expect you to.”

Deaf to Percy's words, the god continued, “I suppose I could prolong your life. If I were to keep you with me to the end. But the end would come. And I couldn't stop you from fragmenting.”

“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again,” Percy quoted.

Apollo looked unpleasantly surprised at the succinct summarisation of the situation. “Yes. Exactly.”

Percy shrugged fatalistically. “It’s alright. I’ve come upon another plan now.”

Apollo flinched. “Please,” he begged. “No more of your plans. They literally hurt me.”

“Who told you to swallow a fragment of my soul and feel all the pain I’ve ever undergone?” Percy retorted before trying more gently, “But it is essential that you help me. I cannot do this without you.”

Apollo covered his face. From behind the shield of his hands, the god asked testily, “I daresay you’re going to beg me for another ride? Where to this time? The Garden of the Hesperides? Earth’s Naval? Inside an erupting volcano?”

“The Styx,” Percy replied. “Inside the Underworld if you can manage it.”

Apollo’s hands fell down with a thump, the god having simply lost control of his limbs.

“Into the Underworld,” Apollo echoed, unimpressed.

“Yes.”

“Why?” the god demanded. “I didn’t help you fake your death for nothing!”

“You didn’t help me fake anything,” Percy countered. “You simply didn’t act till I nearly turned into a pancake over the ocean.”

“Why do you now want to become a smoothie in the Styx?” Apollo implored weakly.

“And if this attempt fails,” Percy continued over the god’s protests, “you’ll have to repeat this until we do succeed.”

Apollo looked like he dearly wished to make some highly unsavoury comments, but refrained, “And what, pray tell, is this wonderful plan that will work despite having failed multiple times before?”

Percy winced, the memory of all those failure blazing their way across his mind before he managed to stamp them down to acrid mulch.

He took in a deep breath. “There was the slightest miscalculation throughout all those attempts,” Percy started slowly. “Perfectly forgivable since for the longest time, I wasn’t aware it was a consideration at all.”

“Stop stalling,” Apollo snapped.

Percy glared at the god for a moment before acceding. “I am Percy Jackson, who carries his mother’s blessing. But,” and Percy couldn’t deny the confused chaos of pain, pride, and sorrow at the declaration, “I am also Icarus, son of Daedalus – and I never had his blessing to jump into the Styx.”

Apollo’s brow furrowed. “So, you plan to jump in, gain functional invulnerability – and?”

Percy blinked back innocently.

Apollo flicked Percy’s forehead. “Do not even try that,” he scolded. “I might not have digested your soul yet, but I have certainly gleaned enough about you to know better.”

Percy gawked at the god. “Digest?” he squeaked.

“Do not change the subject,” Apollo wagged a finger sternly. “What precisely do you intend?”      

Percy could have explained it, gone into grave details about his anticipated future. But looking in those eyes, suddenly teaming with a relief and hope absent till then, he couldn’t.

“My hope is that the part of Kronos that you revealed is still exposed,” Percy confessed. “I hope the touch of the waters will be enough to loosen his grip on me.”

Apollo’s eyes narrowed in thought. “There is a reason we drink the waters of the Styx as recompense for breaking a vow made upon the goddess,” he mused. “It is enough to steal our voice for nine years – which cannot be painless on the rest of the body. The Crooked One might indeed disengage.”

“And if that occurs,” Percy concluded, “the river will hopefully take him right into Tartarus.”

Apollo’s frown disappeared. “It is not an impossible plan,” he admitted. “But were this to fail, I’m afraid I will have to inform the Council.”

“Why haven’t you till now?” Percy inquired suspiciously.

The god shrugged. “What would be the point?”

Percy didn’t need to be a genius to detect that lie. “Try again,” he instructed dryly.

Apollo’s eyes narrowed in a glare but Percy could only detect a muted sort of irritation in them. “There are certain immediate precautions that would be taken,” the god finally said shortly. “You would not like them. And nor are they likely to succeed.”

But measures that would nonetheless be taken, Percy understood. Just like there were certain measures that Percy had to take.

“No matter what, you have to remember,” Percy started, only to be interrupted.

“The ecstasy of grief, the beauty in suffering,” Apollo whispered gently. “That is a worthy sacrifice. Do not fear, Icarus who is also Perseus. I will not forget, even if you were to die once again.”

There was an unspoken promise in those words that Percy didn’t know how to deal with. And so, like always, he ignored it and said, “You don't need to.”

But then, struck by an impulse he had no hopes of explaining, Percy pressed a kiss to the god’s thigh. The cloth tasted strangely sweet, as if someone had dusted it with the crystalline shards of Percy’s hopes.

“All you have to do is remember these words. Perseus Jackson, or do you prefer Percy?”

“Why?” Apollo asked in bewilderment.

“The first time you meet me …say them.”

Apollo snorted. “The first time we meet in a new life, and you want me to ask whether I can address you with an endearment? How improper.”

Percy grinned. “It's the improper things that last longest.”

At the god’s continued truculence, Percy joked, “Since when have you cared about impropriety?”

Apollo sniffed haughtily. “If I am to remember a phrase for thousands of years, it had better be a line for the ages. Not something puerile like this.”

Despite the words, the reminder of Percy’s mortality – that Percy would one day be dust in the air even if Icarus were to survive Kronos with invulnerability as a reward – interjected a dose of much regretted solemnity in the moment.

“Alright,” Apollo promised. “I will remember. But really, Icarus, it won’t be too late to say these things tomorrow.”

Percy blinked in confusion at the god. Why this change in address?

“You won’t be returning to the future even if you manage to survive in your past, Icarus,” Apollo stressed. “No matter what, Icarus is the life you will live out. In this world and the next.”

Apollo wasn’t talking about just defeating Kronos, Percy realised with sorrow. With characteristic optimism and arrogance, the god had already moved past the immediate calamity and begun making plans for the future. Icarus would live out his life in the Age of Heroes, die a peaceful death, be granted Elysium, and live out his afterlife there until it came time to be reincarnated.

At which point, the cycle would be completed, with no aberrations in the timestream.

It seemed a horrible life, Percy thought grimly. Except it would still be more of one than what Percy expected.

“We should leave now,” Percy said. “I dare not risk my feeling better corresponding to Kronos’s own state of health.”

Apollo winced. “I wish you wouldn’t take that name,” he complained. “Why draw his attention unnecessarily?”

“Can you take me to the Underworld?” Percy pressed.

Apollo ran a concerned hand through Percy’s hair. “You have yet to even get up,” the god pointed out. “Are you certain you feel well enough to do anything at all?”

“Yes,” Percy answered.

“It is only proximity to the piece of your soul inside me that is creating this illusion,” Apollo persisted.

“Then stay with me till I step in,” Percy answered without thinking.

Apollo closed his eyes. “I … this won’t end well. There is no conceivable way this can possibly end well.”

“Don’t back up now.”

The leaves of the grove rustled with the god’s agitation. “Do not push me,” Apollo snapped. “That I am humouring you so much does not mean I will accept the entirety of your impertinence.”

As opposed to some of it?

“Don’t take out your anger at the circumstances on me,” Percy responded calmly.

Apollo burst out into an enraged laugh. “At the circumstances? No,” he sneered. “I assure you, a significant proportion of the blame is directed solely at you.” 

Percy arched an eyebrow, simultaneously thrilled at achieving the feat and disappointed that he’d manged it only at this late date. “Does that mean you’re not going to do it?”

One second Percy was comfortably situated in a god’s lap, the next he was face down on the grass as Apollo got to his feet.

“Certainly,” Apollo said solicitously. “Come, stand up. It wouldn’t do to reach the Underworld in such an undignified position.”

It was a dare that Percy was only too unhappy to rise to. And yet, that’s what he forced himself to do.

Percy hungrily drank in his last glimpse at the serene surroundings – taking in the lush grass at his feet, the faces etched on bark by the wrinkles of time, the verdant green of the leaves dripping with leftover dew, and the squirrels intrepidly scampering all over in search of food.

Then he stepped into Apollo’s outstretched arms and let the god transport him to the Underworld.

Despite the longer journey, the wounded state of his soul, and even the irregularity of a living person venturing into the realm of the dead, this trip was aeons better than the previous ones.

Either Apollo would devolve astronomically in the span of a few days, or ingesting Percy’s soul gave the god a new understanding of the frailties of a mortal body that had Apollo taking more care than usual.

Conversely, Percy wanted it to hurt. He wanted to be breathless and nauseous, reeling from experiencing a mode of transportation not meant for him.

Wanted Apollo to look at him and not consider Percy a frail mortal but someone capable of standing beside him.

A pipe dream.

Reluctantly, Percy stepped out of the clinging embrace. Like something out of nightmares that had never been dreamed, the Underworld glowed. Luminescent stalactites hung from the cavern’s ceiling – ready to impale any unwary interloper. The obsidian sand under their feet gleamed with an uncanny sheen.

And right in front of them, lay the torrential waters of the Styx. Gone was the sluggish, debris ridden, ancient creature of Percy’s past. This Styx was a vibrant, energetic sprite – powerful and exulting in its own strength. The rapids of this river would dash anything to rubble. The waters inside it were unrestrained by any bank and instead believed in carving their own way through the Underworld.     

This Styx would swallow Titans and leave not even a drop of ichor behind.

Silently, Percy padded over to the edge of the shore before pausing – trepidation a leaden weight in his gut. Even without glancing at him, Percy was conscious of Apollo hovering to the side, poised to pluck Percy out at the slightest sign of distress.

Taking in one last, sulphur and arsenic tinged breath, Percy stepped into the current.

And burned.

Chapter Text

Some days, Apollon dreamed and woke with the uncanny conviction that this wasn’t where he was meant to be.

He’d waited. Waited until Hades had come to inquire about his sudden, unannounced visit.

He’d look around, perpetually surprised by the silk bedcovers, the murals on the walls, the ceiling that glowed with all the shooting stars his aunt could no longer guide to land herself. Then, with the inevitable crumbling of a rock under the onslaught of a river, Apollon would remember where and who he was.

Remember that he should disintegrate the fragment of soul inside him instead of nurturing it in hopeless dreams of returning it to its owner.

But the memory of the owner always brought along with it the betrayal of the lie – enough to have Apollon tear the sheet off his body in fury.

How dare he?

“Apollon,” his mother asked the fuming god on one such day. “Dearest, has something happened? Only, you seem so cross all the time. And when you don’t, despondency grips you so strongly I fear it will drown you.”

Apollon glared at his plate, shredding the square of ambrosia on it into flakes so small they might as well be dust. “No,” he gritted out.

“If something has upset my darling, just let me know,” Leto coaxed. “Has someone teased you? I’ll beat them up.”

Apollon looked up at her through his lashes, deeply unhappy. “Worse,” he grumbled.

But despite all her efforts, Apollon refused to divulge anything further. Icarus was the sole remaining grain of wheat yet to be planted in fallow ground. As long as Apollon kept him clutched close to his chest, he could live in a world of falsities. The ground was a fertile riverbank and the grain the source of a plant that would see him through winter.

If Apollon opened his fist, however, and let Icarus tumble out …

Other days, though, Apollon dreamed of fancies he wouldn’t admit aloud to anyone. Dreamed of a patchwork future made of altered memories and painted hopes, of stolen snatches of moments that didn’t exist.

And then he painted.

Slowly, bit by bit, the walls of his palace took on the cast of Icarus, till Artemis walked in one day and was struck by the murals gracing their home.

“You always show him falling,” she noted, “never rising.”

It was commentary as well as condemnation.

“But he didn’t rise,” Apollon whispered melancholily.

He fell and fell, till he drowned at the bottom of the Styx.

“Is it the tragedy you value or the boy?” his sister asked sarcastically.

Apollon shrugged. “Can I not appreciate both? It is the loss that makes something irreplaceable, after all.”

Artemis huffed out an irritated breath. “I wish you wouldn’t dwell on the death so much. Even Athena considers it perverse, and she claims credit for the boy’s death.”

Apollon’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I daresay I am more responsible for his death than her, the aggrandizing, aggravating creature that she is.”

Artemis clearly took no note of his comments, disregarding the note of real censure in his voice towards Athena. And why wouldn’t she? Apollon and Athena had always gotten on remarkably well – both blots on the face of Hera, both determined to reel in the worst of their brethren’s excess. Both the brightest of their generation, much to the chagrin of the rest. Both their father’s favourites.

But what good was their father’s favour now?

He’d asked after the boy. Hades had shrugged and pointed into the revolting mass of humanity meandering listlessly on bare volcanic ground.

But that was catalyst enough to paint not what was but what he wished to create.

“Well, he’s not bleeding out,” Icarus guessed, peering perplexedly at the mortal moaning on the bed.

“It could be internal,” Apollon tossed the suggestion idly, more interested in ogling the young man garbed in a tunic bearing his symbol.

Icarus met the unimpressed eyes of the insignificant mortal and smiled reassuringly, “It’s not.”

“Next negative diagnosis?” Apollon asked, humouring both the legacy and his patient.

Icarus turned around so as to conceal his face from his esteemed patient before glaring at the god sprawled on the sole chair in the antechamber of the temple.

“Everything,” Icarus hissed. “I literally don’t know. I’ve told all his symptoms to the others, tried out all their diagnostic methods, prayed to you even – nothing’s wrong with him!”

“Well, clearly, something is,” Apollon pointed out insouciantly. “He wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

What did it matter if the prince had an imaginary ailment or a curse hastening his inevitable death? All that mattered was that his diagnosis-defying illness had prompted Icarus to call upon Apollon.

All that mattered was that the strings that refused to touch Icarus spelled his immortality, not the fact that there was no lifeline there at all.

A mortal had dared insinuate he was just as talented as Apollon. The punishment for the transgression, of course, was death. But Apollon was feeling cruel enough to draw it out.

And draw it out he did. Apollon shot one lazy arrow after another that curved meanderingly, brushing against all those along its trajectory and leaving a trail of death and destruction in its path, before arriving at its ultimate destination – almost spent.

Apollon enjoyed chasing the nameless individual through the streets of the mainland, onto ships that never managed to see shore for more than an hour, saving him from the bizarre circumstances that Apollon himself plunged the mortal into, until the man was a gibbering mess begging for death.

 And only then, disgusted by the man’s cowardly blubbering, did Apollon pull out his final arrow – the one that would bestow death on all.

“What am I doing here again?” Apollon asked dubiously.

“Helping me fake my death,” Icarus whispered under the sound of the bellows he was working.

“But you have to die,” the god protested for the sake of it, admiring the play of muscles glistening with sweat. The Labyrinth might be a terrible place to live, but the closed confines that were nonetheless open to the Sun provided plenty of vistas to appreciate. And Apollon was duly appreciative.

“That’s in your –”

“I am going to die,” Icarus agreed. “But I have to die in a highly specific manner.”

Apollon tilted his head, mumbling to himself, “I knew mortals believed in giving birth after following certain rituals, but I didn’t know they’d progressed to an itinerary for their death, as well.”

“Will you help?” Icarus hissed.

“Will I?” the god was not convinced at all. But the prospect of not helping and letting Icarus collapse in the grips of a true death was dismaying enough for Apollon to not refuse outright.

Apollon might not be the god of battle strategies, and more given to impulsive decisions than he himself preferred, but that didn’t mean he was a slouch in terms of planning. It just had to be … worth it.

Slowly but steadily, Apollon found himself working through the memories contained within the fragment of the mortal inside him.

It was his ravenous appetite, he could admit. He was greedy enough to want to consume everything in his grasp. And the longer that went by without any change, the more Apollon failed to stop himself from taking exploratory nibbles.

Icarus wouldn’t mind, he told himself. And even if he did, the boy had lost all rights to complain when he’d lied to Apollon. When he’d used Apollon’s own confidence in his powers to mislead the god as to his plans.

When he’d used Apollon to plot his death.

Apollon went and ripped off the layers of his walls – yet, despite his rage, not one crack marred the surface of the paintings.

The walls were plastered soon enough, except this time, Apollon painted with the gypsum still wet. It seemed fitting somehow – nothing so ephemeral as colour on already dried walls was sufficient to hold Percy.

Everyone who visited muttered uneasily about Apollon’s tendency to see the future – and lay it out for everyone to peer at to their heart’s content. No one liked venturing into the wing Leto had taken to calling Apollon’s. Not that many visited Delos anyway.   

A slight boy, soaked in rain and tears, vaulted over a monstrous being. All around him lay the sprinkled remains of his mother. And in his eyes – the sheer hatred and judgement there had Aphrodite flush in momentary shame before she controlled herself.

Zoe had trouble looking at the spawn of Echidna despite the mouth full of her arrows when the fresco showed her fighting along with a boy.

Artemis grimaced at her lieutenant’s recalcitrance but muttered in an undertone, “It is good that she sees this now. If one day coexistence were to become necessary, I would not have her succumb to pride.”

Apollon looked at her in amusement. “Wiser words you have never spoken, sister.”

She glared at him. “It is not every male I have an issue with,” she snapped. “Though you tempt me indeed.”

Apollon never did manage to paint the Underworld though. Not the rushing waters of the Styx nor the wispy ghost staring through him without a trace of recognition – the fragments of Icarus coalesced back to a pristine, unravaged, unknowing state by the time Apollon found him.

There was something unspeakably tender in the parting gaze.

Apollon stared, unable to truly believe that this was it – that Icarus would truly be leaving – leaving and not coming back. Apollon dearly wished to say that this wasn’t worth it – but even in a dream, the god knew that defeating Kronos, even momentarily, was worth far more.

“Let me have a taste of you,” he blurted out.

Icarus blinked. “Like a kiss?” he checked.

Like imbibing a very part of his essence, more like, but Apollon did not feel quite up to quibbling about details at the moment.

He nodded.

Hesitant, but something approaching want shading his features, Icarus obligingly tilted his head to the side.

Memories of clashing teeth and swallowed sobs threatened to break the illusion, but when had Apollon ever been bad at imagination?

Even when they parted, Apollon used his grip on the back of Icarus’s head to hold him in place, refusing to cease breathing in the young man’s gasps, to stop feeling Icarus’s pants gust across his lips one second sooner than he must.

He refused to forget Icarus a second sooner than he must.

Apollon looked at the woman being crowned with the laurel wreath of victory. Her bright eyes, as incandescent open as they’d been devoted while closed, drew him in. The sounds of the hymn to him reverberated through his essence, soothing a part of him still smarting from rejection.

She caught his eyes and blushed.

Apollon smiled back slowly.

The face, not conventionally beautiful but engaging in a way Apollon found himself attracted to, lowered bashfully. But before too long, green eyes flickered back to gaze upon his form, only to skitter away at being caught.

Leto shook her head at Apollon’s smirk. At least her son was finally recovering from whatever malady had so possessed him.           

***

Apollo wouldn’t say he forgot. He was a god – forgetfulness took constant concentration that he refused to deign the boy with. But time had a way of dulling the rough edges of even the thorniest plants, of oiling the gears of the creakiest machine.

Apollo stopped dwelling upon him – the one who simultaneously lay in the past and had yet to enter his life.

Icarus had been an anomaly, an obsession solely due to the lack of opportunity than anything else. Had Apollo once claimed to love him? (Claimed to love the person who would become Icarus or the person who lay in his future? Claimed to love an enigma laid bare that had left!)

A fanciful declaration from one who fell into love at the drop of a hat. An infatuation with a hero Apollo had never encountered the likes of before.

Willing to hold up the sky to release Artemis!

How could Apollo not give a token of his appreciation, even if only verbal?       

It still came as something of an unpleasant surprise when he learned the name of the demigod son of Poseidon’s who’d managed to kill the Minotaur with his own horn.

Percy Jackson.

Apollo knew then what would happen. Gazing at the boy and reciting words entrusted to him millennia ago, Apollo dug dug through his memories in search of things left behind in the past. For instants sanded into nothing by the friction of passing moments.

It all came to a head when Hephaestus declared uncompromisingly at the war meeting, “Typhon will break free in a day. Maybe less.”

“Why did you not inform us of this earlier?” Aphrodite shrieked.

“He did,” Hera pointed out waspishly. “You were one of the proponents of waiting till he had actually escaped his prison before acting.”

“This is all the fault of that son of Poseidon’s,” Zeus complained. “And where is his father now? Hiding under the sea.”

“He’s fighting a war, Father,” Athena pointed out with pursed lips. “Which makes any possibility of help from that quarter unlikely.”

“We will manage perfectly well without him,” Zeus dismissed. The quaver in his vice gave him away.

Athena nodded slowly. “Then I will direct everyone to where they will be the most helpful.”

Apollo closed his eyes. Just for a moment.

And regretted. 

There was still time to visit, pass on a message, anything.

But some things were written in stone. And so, despite his better inclinations, Apollo refrained from intervening.

Chapter Text

Percy could only blame the pain for what happened next.

“If I thought, for moment, that I was putting your life in jeopardy, I couldn’t do it,” Daedalus admitted.

Despite the clear reluctance, though the protection stretched, the man’s blessing held.

“This is decidedly strange,” Percy mumbled, taking in the skeletons wielding different weapons.

A young man with short blond hair, with a scar bisecting his lower lip, smiled sardonically. “We are at Epirus, to propitiate my uncle into allowing us entry into, and more importantly, an exit from the Underworld. I should say so.”

Then the thing inside his chest wriggled and tried to pull him back. Percy dismissed all the wraiths swimming alongside him and clung tenaciously to the memories of mortal life.

But the intruder was no less determined to have its way. Stubbornly, it used its grip on Percy to twist the demigod’s blood vessels into knots.

But there was a bleeding would in Percy’s body, one that had begun screaming at the very first touch of the waters of the Styx. A wound Percy had inflicted on himself with an obsidian blade filched surreptitiously from the banks of the Underworld.

It had felt exactly like stabbing oneself in the chest and then dousing the wound in acid ought to – but when needs must and all that jazz.  

However agonizing, it was sufficient to block Kronos’s attempts to manipulate Percy’s body into giving up before the demigod was ready.

Like cement shoring up disintegrating foundations, the Styx flowed into Percy and turned flesh into unbreakable diamond.

Sobbing vaporised tears, Percy reached inside his chest and grabbed the wriggling, boiling mass. The spider silk tendrils threatened to slip out of his grasp, but it was this very movement that made it possible to distinguish them from Percy’s own body.

Forget about holding onto an anchor, if there was anything attaching Percy to mortality, it was the desire to not let Kronos win.

Percy blacked out.

Strangest of all occurrences, instead of dying or waking up back in the Labyrinth, Percy opened his eyes when he collided into a rock planted incongruously in the middle of the river.

Spluttering, Percy blinked away the fogginess, the temporary cessation of the pain rendering him delirious.

He could swear there was something inside him holding him together, a tender spot on the inside of his thigh that throbbed with every crashing wave, visions of Daedalus towering over him.

Where was Kronos? Percy’s chest was a mangled mess with congealed blood stubbornly seeping out, but no vines quivered in his veins.

Was he … gone? It seemed silly to consider something that required a dip in the Styx to be anticlimactic, yet that was what ran through Perc’s mind. Yet, not one to borrow trouble, Percy looked around, searching for any landmark that would spark even a trace of recognition.

All he found was water on all sides. All he saw was his own bloody fingers digging into the craggy black rock with all his might.

Which meant it was time to analyse just what it was keeping him afloat, what it was keeping him comfortably numb.

Percy tried to twitch his noise, unable to sooth the itch there any other way, only to fail – body firmly in the grip of someone else.

He should have been scared. His mind should have instantly jumped to doomsday visions of Kronos having grabbed control of his body – but it didn’t.

There was nothing to recoil at. Percy knew this individual. Knew this person through every single moment of his life.

It was himself, after all.

Himself and yet not.

The reason Percy hadn’t died instantly after the impromptu soul surgery, hadn’t dissolved into crushed pulp after just a few deaths, was because it hadn’t been just Percy inside. Percy and Icarus might have been the same soul, but they were singularities at different points in time.

Percy wasn’t just memories overlaid on Icarus. They were the same soul but doubled – twins existing in combination.

The Lethe was a veil dividing Percy from Icarus – just as the Styx would prevent Icarus from becoming Percy until he crossed her banks as a true shade. The two rivers were enforcers of the rules of the Underworld – and it was they who would ensure things remained as they ought to.

Exhausted, reluctant to but glad to relinquish control, Percy imagined letting go of the rock and swimming to the bank. They couldn’t stay here, he knew. The Styx might have turned their body indestructible, but they would always remain vulnerable to that which had granted them this blessing. The Styx would melt them to nothing. That was what it did.

Icarus might have the willpower to last for a long time, longer still if Percy supplemented his dwindling determination – but ultimately, they would fail, washed away under the relentless    onslaught of an immortal goddess.

Nearly gone, Icarus struggled against the rapids to make it to the bank. Their body was shredded after the battle with Kronos – only so much muscle stubbornly clinging to bone. And yet, such was the power of the Styx that it was still intact – mortal spot untouched.

The Styx, though, wasn’t remiss in bathing every inch of their insides in a parody of a mother’s care – every breath drowned their lungs in acid, every stroke forward was a tearing pain determined to pull them apart.

Icarus pulled himself ashore on the other side of the Styx, and lay panting on the bank.

And then – a sharp, piercing pain.

Percy stiffened, vision going black as the inside of his thigh was stabbed and thoroughly decimated.

The situation escalated entirely too rapidly.

A weight dragged itself along the ground, shards of obsidian sand clanking unpleasantly with the motion.

“Did you think you could defeat me that easily?” Kronos hissed. “That a puny goddess too weak to stand against me without the support of my own children could destroy me?”

Percy couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe as a lethargy so absolute it was paralysing stole over him.

And yet, he had to move.

They were dying, Percy knew. Even had the stab missed any vital areas, the Styx had packed every single vulnerability in their body into that one spot on their inner thigh.

It could have been a glancing blow and Icarus would have still departed the mortal coil.

Percy couldn’t die. Not when Kronos was right here – a ghostly, see-through wraith more reminiscent of the Minos that had tricked Nico than the golden health that symbolised a possessed Luke, but undeniably there.

Icarus and Percy both struggled to remain within a body irreversibly pushing them out, only to get entangled in the other’s efforts. Their determined if accidental thwarting of the other’s attempts only gave Kronos the opportunity to crawl over to them and pull at their wounded leg.

Percy may have screamed. Or he may have died.     

Either way, a dizzying array of colours assaulted him – except it was only shades of darkness, lit solely by the flickering illumination of gaseous orbs burning behind a smoky haze.

The swirling mixture steadied into an amorphous region – the ground mere suggestion to be ignored, the sky merged into nonexistence, and Percy's own limbs hazy outlines camouflaging into his surroundings.

This was a reprieve from the pain and urgency gripping him that Percy was reluctant to relinquish. And yet, Apollo’s dismissively stated words rang though his head, the god scoffing at the notion of Chronos risking the sanctity of time and the order of the Universe, just to punish one insolent demigod.

One of them had to die. It couldn’t be Percy, he realised. But Icarus had to.

Icarus had to remain in the Underworld, while Percy had to depart.

Your soul a swinging door into yesterday.         

Doors were two-way streets. If Percy’s soul could be a doorway into the past, why could it not be one into the future as well?

Percy tore away the veil over his head and lunged across the scant few inches separating him from a wildly grinning Titan. 

With a snarl twisting up the remnants of his being, Percy clawed into insides bathed in the corrosive waters of the Styx.

Apollo smiled. “Your suffering is the only sacrifice I am willing to accept.”

If Kronos could initiate a trip to the past by the future sacrifice of Percy’s unwilling deaths, why could Percy not do the same with the Titan’s own essence?

The surprised Titan tried to resist, but whatever limitations to Percy’s powers had been imposed by his mortal body were steadily dissolving with every single step closer to death the demigod took.

Percy was alive enough that his hand slid into Kronos’s form – but Icarus was dead enough that his hand gripped the facsimile of the heart inside the Titan.

Kronos transformed his hand into barbed whips and sliced at Percy’s cheek, but Styx blessed skin repelled it with ease. The Titan attempted to pull the demigod off him, but Percy was rooted too deeply inside him.  

Icarus might be the grandson of Athena, but Percy was the son of Poseidon. And in a place where the consequences of reincarnation could plunge you into the Phlegethon or uplift you to the Isles of the Blest, what was a little matter such as Percy having not been born yet?

Kronos had steadily collected the ichor running through Icarus’s veins, nurtured it into something capable of powering a Titan, and dragged it out with himself when Percy expelled him.

Ichor might not be water – but it was Percy’s. It had flown through him for nearly seventeen years even if the last had been lived in another’s body, been his companion from the moment of conception to when he would die. How could it not respond to Percy’s desires? 

Percy called the ichor back.

Kronos resisted – glowing supernova hot in an attempt to incinerate Percy. But Icarus was already dead – what did it matter if someone tried to separate the tethers between him and his body?

Something cracked inside Percy. But Percy was broken enough to not care what other part of him he’d sacrificed this time.

He did not care what stopping Kronos entailed provided this phantom of the Titan disappeared.

Like a flood released from a broken dam, ichor rushed to fill every nook and cranny of Percy’s soul. Like an intrepid child seeking out hiding spots in a playground game, it crept into every crack in Percy’s soul, occupied every vacant corner, and fused inseparably with the demigod.

Percy swayed, only dimly aware of the dead teenager behind him, attention focused solely on the empty spot before him hitherto inhabited by Kronos.

Golden, effervescent champagne bubbles frothed inside Percy – filling him up with burning light that threatened to crack his recently mended soul and spill out.

And that wasn’t a fanciful apprehension, Percy knew. If he remained, if he retained this power, the ichor so tenderly clinging to his mortal soul would burn through him – but there wasn’t nearly enough ichor to replace all it would destroy.

“Come back to me,” Sally entreated.

Commanded.

And the ichor, coloured in the green shades of Kronos, obeyed.

Come back to me.

Percy did.

Chapter Text

Hades stared in exasperation at his bickering wife and sister. Never let it be said that he didn’t encourage Persephone to maintain her relations, but did that have to entail having Demeter foisted off on him?

Thoughtlessly, he picked up the glass abandoned on the dining table in front of him and took a sip, only to spit it out in disgust.

What?

What should have been sunset coloured nectar had been replaced with a disgusting, radioactive shade of chlorophyll.

“… dark, dank, without a hint of the Sun, covered with a mockery of the flowers you should be surrounded by,” Demeter continued on with her tirade, uncaring that her very presence soured all aspects of Hades’ life.   

“Stop pressing, mother!” Persephone whined. “No matter how much you complain, I am not risking going outside when Typhon is rampaging around the place.”

“Oh, who cares about Typhon?” Demeter dismissed, though the skin around her eyes tightened in a tell-tale motion.

Hades was glad when Alecto flapped into the throne room. But instead of dragging in a captured Perseus Jackson or even his reprobate of a mortal son, all she brought in her wake was worry.

“My lord,” she said even before landing. “You must leave at once – those demigods entered the entrance to the Pit.”

Hades rose up in alarm. “Why?”

Alecto shrugged, her wings mimicking the motion with a swing that knocked Hades’ untouched bowl of cereal off the table.

“Is this really the time to wonder why when you could be stopping them?” Persephone demanded, her brown eyes wide with something approaching fear.

As with anything not related to her obsession with art (Hades blamed Demeter’s friendship with Leto – the two of them had planned to push their children together until Apollo’s tendency to fall in and out of love within the span of a year revealed itself. But by then, it had been entirely too late to prevent Persephone been indoctrinated into Apollo’s cult of appreciators of beauty.), Persephone was right.

Hades could inquire into the intentions of the intruders after he was done pulling them off the carousel heading straight into prison.

Hades flashed into the tunnel leading to one of the only two official entrances to Tartarus before breaking into a run.

Undignified though it might be to race to catch the thieves in his own house, the god dared not fly any closer to the Pit for fear of being caught in its pull and dragged into the depths of the primordial masquerading as the Underworld’s basement.

The sight that came into view had Hades practically flying though.

Crouched behind the flimsy protection of a rock was Maria’s son – desperately clutching at the insensate body of Poseidon’s boy.

Hades pushed back with his own powers, forcing down the energies of the creature struggling to capture a couple of morsels to whet its appetite. It was both easier and more difficult than it had ever been in the past, sending a tendril of cold creeping along his body in a parody of the vines Persephone liked tickling him with.

This was his father – weaker than ever because most of him had already escaped and was now busy wearing a mortal like an especially raggedy suit of clothes.

But also, this was his father, stronger than Hades had ever seen him inside the Underworld. Something had called him up. Him and the remnants of the being fluttering around him like a cape.

Even as Hades struggled to suppress Kronos, the cape slipped free from the clasp of the Titan and floated above the lip of the pit.

Hades determinedly put himself between the creature and the demigods, hoping to dissuade the monster from approaching Maria’s boy with nothing more than his presence. Which was all he could spare for anything but the fragments of his father threatening to slide out of his grip like water through sand.

The creature paused, seemed to inspect Hades, and then broke into innumerable slivers. But instead of dissipating or fleeing like Hades had hoped, the wispy remnants moved unerringly towards the demigods at his back.

“No, go away!” Nico shrieked. “Father!”

Hades grimaced and redoubled his efforts to suppress Kronos. There was only so much even the Lord of the Underworld could do – and suppressing Kronos, preventing Tartarus from sucking in all near him, and stopping the shards of a wounded creature from attacking demigods, simultaneously, was beyond him.

Hades turned around just in time to see the faded, gold encrusted fragments sink into Perseus Jackson.

“Father!” Nico pleaded in desperation.

Eager to be away from there and wary as to the repercussions of letting the boy get possessed by an inhabitant of Tartarus, Hades strode forward, grabbed both the demigods by the neck, and ran.

All the while though, Hades couldn’t help but wonder. What had that thing been? An amalgamation of a mortal soul and godly ichor, yes. But also – prayers. Wishes. Fury. Divinity.

What was it? Not Kronos – but not wholly disparate from him either. Not when it had retained enough similarities to respond to a summon for the Titan.

“What were you thinking?” Hades thundered the moment he’d deposited the demigods in his throne room, ignoring the alarm on Persephone and Demeter’s face as they got to their feet.

“We just wanted to call on Chronos for help,” Nico sobbed.

Or not dissimilar enough for Kronos to not piggyback off a call meant for another.     

“Were you not going to lead the Jackson brat to the Styx?” Hades demanded, tucking away the disconcerting thought for later contemplation. “How much more help do you require that you’d risk plunging into Tartarus itself?”

“We thought he’d want to hurt Kronos more than us,” Nico whimpered, tears slipping out of panicked eyes. “Percy … he’ll be okay right? He’s not dead?”

“You’d know if he was,” Persephone pointed out, not unkindly.

Both the goddesses had come over to join Hades in a half-circle around the demigods. Which meant they had a perfect view of the miserable, apprehensive, refusal to admit reality that crossed Nico’s face.

Hades would forever deny that his ichor stopped circulating for a second in shock. He’d been so distracted keeping them alive that even had Jackson breathed his last during their madcap dash from Tartarus, Hades wouldn’t have noticed.

But Nico would have.

Nico, who refused to admit it.

Hades crouched and pressed his hand to the side of Poseidon’s son’s throat.

A strong heartbeat throbbed against his questing finger.

“He’s alive,” Hades announced, ignoring the relief on Persephone’s face. Though he wished otherwise, he was perfectly aware his wife believed the Jackson boy to be the hero of the Great Prophecy, not Nico.

“He screamed so loudly,” Nico whispered. “The thing there – it reached inside him, and Percy screamed so much.”

“Let’s take him to one of the bedrooms,” Demeter said brusquely. “The cold floor’s no place for recuperation.”

A shocked Nico allowed himself to be drawn to his feet and then numbly escorted the body of his friend to one of the rooms Hades reserved for politically inconvenient guests.

It was only once both boys were situated under the covers and the door closed behind them that Persephone dared ask, “Who was it? Or did Chronos really arrive and …?”

“It was the Crooked One,” Hades answered shortly.

Demeter sucked in a breath. “But he’s outside,” she hissed.

Hades looked at her in irritation. “You know perfectly well all of him couldn’t escape. It’s just enough to possess a body – which is the only reason Luke Castellan is still alive.”

“Which is also why we absolutely cannot afford to wait for the insult to my daughter to reach sixteen,” Demeter shot back. “Two years is more than enough time for even a minuscule fragment to grow into a Titan strong enough to crush us.”

“Don’t start again,” Hades snapped.

“Both of you,” Persephone interrupted forcefully, “stop arguing. Percy Jackson is already nearly sixteen. And now he’s potentially been possessed by a remnant of the Crooked One. It doesn’t matter whether we want Nico to be the one. Probability states that it will be Jackson – and he’ll decide to doom us all unless we can figure out a way to wrench the thing out of him.”

Demeter tapped a finger against her arm before fixing an intent gaze onto Persephone. “Can you separate them, or should I call over Psyche.”

Persephone grimaced. “I am better at inflicting damage on a soul than undoing it mother.”

“That might be just what we require,” Hades told her. “Kronos might not linger inside Jackson – but something else certainly does.”

Persephone frowned in confusion before deciding against talking any further. Whirling around, she threw open the bedroom door and strode inside the queen she was.

“Are you quite certain you managed to suppress all of our illustrious father?” Demeter asked Hades in an undertone.

“As if you’d allow her near the boy had you any doubts,” Hades replied despite his own reservations.

Demeter scowled before marching inside.

Hades, however, stayed right where he was – body poised to attack or defend as required. He trusted Persephone to emerge unscathed from her foray into the demigod’s mind, and Demeter to protect Nico from whatever fight might occur. But if whatever (Hades refused to believe it was Chronos) was inside Perseus put up a battle, it would be Hades who would defend the entire Underworld.

If only by destroying both demigod and his inhabitant.

Nico looked up from his observation of Jackson at the slamming of the doors.

“What are you doing?” he cried out as Persephone perched on the side of the bed and grabbed Jackson by the forehead.

It was Demeter who answered, albeit with pursed lips, “She’s checking to see the extent of the damage.”

Nico’s protests subsided though the boy looked ready to jump his stepmother if Jackson displayed the slightest hint of discomfort.

But Persephone drew back with a perplexed frown before he had the chance. “He’s not … he … you need to call Apollo.”

Hades started. “What?”

“Can you not tell?” Persephone asked, a tone of fright in her voice. “His mark lies all over the boy – it’s like Apollo’s gouged out pieces from him. Like he’s …”

Whatever it was Persephone thought Apollo might have done though, she left unsaid. “His soul is barely held together with ichor and immortal divinity. If I try to separate the two, he’ll break apart.”

“But the divinity belongs to which immortal?” Demeter asked leadingly. “Destroying some people is worth a demigod’s destruction.”

“Worth Apollo’s revenge?” Persephone laughed incredulously. “If we destroy the boy and he finds out, perhaps you two Olympians might escape unscathed, but I certainly won’t. And your demigod children might not either. And that’s speaking nothing of what Poseidon might do.”     

“That’s not an answer,” Hades pointed out. “Who is it?”

Persephone shrugged. “How would I know? They’re entwined so tightly with Perseus that were they both mortal or immortal, perhaps Psyche might be the only to one even be able to discern there are two people to distinguish between.”

Nico, however, had had enough. The stupid boy grabbed Perseus and attempted to hide the demigod behind himself. “You’re not hurting him,” he shrieked.

Demeter looked at him in pity. “There’s a very good possibility that Perseus Jackson has already been hurt irreversibly. What we are discussing is only the fate of his body, child. The person’s already gone.”

“I don’t believe you,” Nico denied. “And you’re not doing anything to him. Persephone wants to call over Apollo, right? Then let’s call him. He’s the healer god. If anyone can fix Percy, it’s him.”

Persephone grimaced, opened her mouth, and then closed it right back without intimating that Apollo wouldn’t be coming over to heal anyone – not if he was the one to have carved away pieces of the boy’s soul.

Hades hoped he wasn’t. Apollo had a way of getting his own way, even if that way was paved with his own ichor and tears.

“Everyone’s busy fighting Typhon,” Hades tried to nip Nico’s obstinacy in the bud. “The only way to get Apollo here would be if Typhon were to miraculously be imprisoned again.”

“There’s nothing miraculous about it,” Nico cried out. “If you help them, there’s no way Typhon won’t be locked up instantly.”

Demeter snorted. “As if he will agree to fight for the sake of Poseidon’s brat when he hasn’t for the rest of the family.”

As much of a family they were, Hades thought bitterly, considering they’d never considered Hades himself as part of it.

Nico’s eyes blew wide as he tried to find any support only to see three intractable gods staring at him. Desperately, the boy turned towards Perseus and shook him vigorously. “Percy! Percy, you have to wake up! Percy!”

Perseus Jackson didn’t wake up. But what happened was perhaps more alarming than if the boy had simply opened his eyes, sat up, and begun chattering brightly about the weather.   

Hades recognised that tell-tale glow, the growing tinge of gold emanating from a demigod, illuminating from inside that which was never meant to shine.

“Nico,” Hades shouted in alarm, “drop him!”

Had it been Hera, Nico would be dead right then. But Persephone displayed why Hades loved her, not his sister. She grabbed Nico by the collar and simply flew out of the room despite the boy’s surprised shout.

With a glow that could have rivalled the Sun itself, Perseus Jackson opened eyes that switched dizzyingly through a gamut of green, blue, gold, and black.

Unearthly eyes took in his surroundings before Perseus acknowledged, “Uncle Hades. How nice to see you again.”

And Hades had the uncomfortable feeling that the demigod might even mean it.

Chapter Text

“You’re glowing,” Nico said hesitantly.

“I know,” Percy agreed. The fact that he constantly tried to turn away from the light only to realise anew that it was emanating from his own skin made it kind of hard to ignore.

“But you’re fine?” Nico pressed.

Percy took in the dishevelled black hair, the strained expression on a pale face, the fear swimming in brown eyes, and felt compassion.

It must have been frightening to watch Kronos attack Percy, nearly get sucked into Tartarus, perhaps even feel Percy die at least once, and now be confronted by what everyone insisted was an eldritch abomination inhabiting the glowing body of his friend.

Percy unbent enough to reassure, “I’m fine, Nico. I wasn’t before – but now I am.”

Nico swallowed, looking younger than his fourteen years. “And the other person inside you?”

Percy shook his head. “I can’t feel them. If anyone else is here, they’re hiding very well.”

And Percy rather thought he’d recognise an interloper, what with having shared a body with another soul for a year. Though, considering it had taken the death of that soul for Percy to identify his presence, perhaps Percy ought to refrain from making such daring statements. 

Nico fidgeted before bursting out, “I’ll convince them to let you out soon.”

“Please do. We really need to go back and join the fight as soon as possible.”

Nico nodded before slowly walking away. Despite his seeming willingness to depart, however, he kept on turning back with every step – as if afraid Percy might have spontaneously combusted in the span of a second.

Which was entirely likely if Percy thought about it – which he refused to.

Percy felt like the energizer bunny, drunk on caffeine and temped to hop around destroying the furniture until his heart gave out from the strain.

Considering the circumstances, Percy could perfectly understand why Hades’ first reaction to discovering his possibly possessed nephew – who was definitely on the verge of exploding – had woken up, was to chuck him in a cell and call it a day.

Unfortunately, Percy had never been a docile prisoner, and today was not the day that was going to change.

The energy inside him, which continuously vacillated between a playful exuberance and an aged solemnity, flashed to awareness at Percy’s nudge. It followed Percy’s of train of thought and seemed to pulse in agreement.

Strange as it was to be interpreting the moods of an inanimate combination of ichor and energy, Percy took it for the approval it was. Brow furrowed in concentration, he stretched out a finger and touched the lock on the cell bars.

For a moment, nothing changed.

Then, solemn remembrance flowed through the point of contact and reminded the padlock of the moment when it wasn’t locked. 

With a click, the mechanism switched back to its erstwhile position and one side of the padlock swung down in surrender.

Percy grinned.

***

The security guard took one look at the sunlight streaking across Percy’s skin like lightning before promptly ushering them into the elevator of the Empire State Building. The glare from Annabeth kept the rest of the demigods from following.

“We’ll take the next one,” Connor suggested, rapidly backing off.

The door closed. The dreadful elevator music began playing. And Annabeth finally addressed the issue of Percy.

“What happened to you?” she burst out. “First you leave a cryptic message, then you disappear from camp, and when you do finally show up, you look like someone started painting you only to run out of gold halfway through.”

Percy laughed. It was either this or cry. “You’re not wrong. They did run out. I ran out. Of ichor.”

Watching horror overtake the annoyed grey in her eyes was upsetting beyond his expectation. Percy hadn’t wanted to worry her.

“Your ichor concentration is too high,” Annabeth breathed out. “What’s your level now? Thirty? That must be the limits of how much even a child of the Big Three can take.”

“Ichor concentration?” Percy asked in confusion.

“The percentage of your blood that’s been replaced by ichor,” Annabeth explained in outrage. “That’s the basics of our biology, Percy. Too much ichor, and we die!”

“I know that,” Percy snapped back. “Just didn’t know the term.”

No one had ever gone into the scientific details of it, not when knowing the exact numbers was wholly unnecessary considering their godly descent showed itself the most during moments of danger. It wasn’t as if they’d ever discovered a way to bring it down and repair the damage incurred.

Annabeth pressed a fist to her mouth, sniffed, and then continued stiffly. “Never mind. The gods will heal you. You’re not no one – they can’t afford to have you die.”

Percy scoffed. “I doubt that.”

Not given the pitying look Demeter had shot him before leaving him in the cell. Not given how Persephone had shaken her head and whispered in a voice that had nonetheless carried to Percy’s newly sharp ears, “We really need to call Apollo and Poseidon. The boy dies in our hands, your brother won’t hesitate to make our lives very miserable.”

Not when Hades had huffed out an unhappy, “He can hardly blame this on us. If anyone is at fault, it’s Poseidon for allowing the brat enough access to his domains for this state to have been reached in the first place.”

Annabeth swallowed. “Well, then. Just don’t do anything. Rest and hope it gets better.”

This time, Percy’s laugh was genuine. “You really think I’m going to get that chance?”

She looked at him miserably. “It’s the only way, Percy. Wait and hope your body can work through it.”

Percy shook his head, glad when the door pinged open to reveal the floating path to Olympus. Perhaps others could wait it out like an infection to be purged from their bodies, but Percy knew the ichor in him was merely the symptom of something else.

Something deeper.

He’d felt it – Persephone poking around the edges of his soul where even now, something he could only call ichor due to its similarity with the incandescent substance, was occupying the holes in his soul.

Except, it wasn’t ichor.

It was simply the closest approximation to what felt like an actual god taking residence in his being. A god that felt, bizarrely enough, like a part of him polished and gilded till it was nigh unrecognisable.

Percy pushed aside the contemplations of his dwindling sense of self and focused instead on the vacant Olympus – and the strange blue lights that streaked across the sky towards the mountain at the centre of the city.

Luckily, the lights fizzled out before they could reach the empty home of the gods and reveal their nefarious objective.

“We should hurry,” Annabeth mumbled before leading the way towards the colossal palace perched at the top of the mountain.

But no matter their intentions, being waylaid by a goddess was something that a person just had to make time for. Her and the disconcerting visions into Luke’s life Hestia believed to be of the utmost importance.

Meeting Hermes was another shock to the system Percy hadn’t anticipated. He hadn’t expected the same irreverent god who’d cheerfully pointed out the curse on the demigod – but neither had he expected a battered, bitter, deeply pained god. There was something almost timeless about Hermes’s grief that resonated deep inside Percy, in the part of him reserved for the contradictory energy even now aching to touch the god and make him a part of itself.

Percy stepped back, chivvying along Annabeth behind him. “I’m sorry for your loss,” Percy told Hermes. “But if you want your sacrifice to have any meaning, for you to have not simply foreseen the future and let it unfold out of malice and not necessity, you need to tell me.”

Hermes stared at Percy, sheer rage battling with agony across his features. “What do you know about my motivations?” the god hissed. “What do you know about my sacrifice?”

“Nothing,” Percy admitted. “Except that the pain inside you is not of an indifferent observer. It’s something gods have shared across the ages, however much you deny it. You knew what would happen. You knew their fate. And perhaps you didn’t cause it – but you allowed it to unfold. If your permission is not to be approval, then now’s the time.”

Percy didn’t know where the words came from, but somehow, he knew they were true. This was a malady unique to the gods – and what had driven many a mortal mad. Knowing the future, knowing the steps they’d have to dance to lead their mortal partners unwittingly into a trap made especially for them – that was something every god did. Willingly or otherwise.

Hermes shuddered. “Careful Percy. Whatever ancient part of your father you are tapping into right now – it will see you dead before you ever face Kronos.”

“You’re glowing Percy,” Annabeth added tensely. “More than you already were.”

Percy didn’t quite understand the reference to his father, but he did know one thing. “Then tell me. If you wish to defeat Kronos – tell me what happened to May Castellan. And why Hestia believed it’s essential to defeat Kronos.”

Hermes closed his eyes. “Leave, Chase. You are one person not allowed to be in my sight if I am to reveal this.”

***

“What did he have to say?” Annabeth confronted him the moment Percy returned from his conversation with Hermes.

Percy opened his mouth only to close it again. Was this what Oedipus had felt, the demigod thought bitterly, when he realised the only reason the horrible prophecy had come true was because of the machinations of its subjects? A self-fulfilling prophecy brought to fruition only because the gods had reacted to the prophecy not by making all the demigod children of the Big Three immortal, forever frozen in time, but by killing them.

Had Zeus not tried to kill Nico and Bianca and gotten their mother instead, Hades would have never cursed the Oracle of Delphi. May Castellan would have never gone mad from attempting to bear the Oracle. Luke would have never run from home. He would have never befriended and watched Thalia turn into a tree because she was hunted by Hades.

Percy closed his eyes. If only Zeus had kept true to his word to not intend any harm to the children of Hades.

Luke would have never turned to Kronos for revenge.

“Percy?” Annabeth prompted.

Percy’s eyes popped open, lines from another prophecy running through his mind.

A broken promise, prophecy sent astray.

Instinctively, he knew that Zeus’s promise wasn’t the one mentioned. And yet, he couldn’t help the notion that he was on the right track. That it was a broken promise that had sent Percy careening straight into the past – and that it would be the same promise that would either save or raze Olympus.

Chapter Text

Percy had never hated being right as much as when he fought Kronos in the empty throne room of Olympus. He’d been right to believe he couldn’t fight off a Titan at full strength – Hyperion might have been defeated with comparative ease, but Kronos was another beast altogether.

The only reason Percy still held onto his sword and wasn’t currently struggling to avoid getting his defenceless head chopped off was the energy flowing through his veins.

An energy that was changing something inside of him.

What had started on the banks of the Styx, was reaching a crescendo. The summoning of a hurricane had only whetted the appetite of the ravenous creature rampaging through his body. Percy could quite literally feel his body changing, growing faster, resisting Kronos’s powers more.

But even then, fighting the Titan was merely an endless slog through quicksand instead of shouldering the sky again.

Impossible.

Then what he’d been dreading since the beginning happened. Percy thrust at a seemingly unguarded Kronos, aiming at another spot he’d yet to attempt to skewer, only for it to be a feint.

Kronos caught Percy’s blade against the hilt of his sword, twisted it, and flung the weapon into the fissure in the floor that led hundreds of feet down the mountain.

It was instinct that had Percy raise a hand and scream, “Stop!”

Kronos didn’t stop.

But he did slow, shock twisting his features – giving enough time for Percy to roll out from underneath Backbiter, the sword Luke had once had created on the orders of the Titan lord himself. 

"Stop!" Annabeth echoed as she rushed in from nowhere and attacked Kronos.

But stopping Kronos even momentarily was a jump beyond Percy’s limits. He collapsed to his hands and knees, searing agony racing through his body.

His muscles twisted like writhing snakes injecting venom straight into his veins. His blood boiled.

Percy couldn’t see – his vision a blinding sunburst that it took entirely too long for him to recognise as a glow pouring off his own skin.

He could only dimly listen to Annabeth try to reason with Kronos.

“Your mother,” Annabeth grunted. “She saw your fate.”

“Service to Kronos!” the Titan roared, not even trying to make his impersonation of Luke convincing. “This is my fate.”

Percy blacked out for a bit from the pain. When he came to, it was to see Annabeth collapsed on the floor, blood trickling from a corner of her mouth.

“Family, Luke. You promised,” she pleaded.

And Percy understood.

Kronos staggered midway through the killing blow directed at Annabeth. He stared at the knife clutched defensively in Annabeth’s hand, at her bruised body and bleeding face, and gasped.

“Annabeth …”

Annabeth tried to raise her dagger only to have it slip out of a broken hand.

Percy stumbled to his feet and somehow managed to take advantage of Luke’s fleeting rise to the surface to grab the knife Annabeth had dropped, knock Backbiter out of Luke’s grip, and stand protectively in front of Annabeth.

But then he paused, at a loss.

Radiating as much light as Percy himself, Luke gasped out, “He's changing. Help. He's … he's almost ready. He won't need my body anymore. Please–”

Before Percy could decide either way, Kronos resumed control of the body. The Titan bellowed and stumbled towards his sword, but Percy didn’t bother stopping him. Quite without knowing how, Percy was certain that Backbiter was one cursed blade Hestia would keep from Kronos’s hands.

He was right.

You are not the hero.

Rachel’s words combined with the Oracle’s like some prophetic round robin.

And then Percy handed over Annabeth’s knife to Luke and watched the man stab himself in the armpit.

Perhaps Percy should have closed his eyes. But it was like a horror movie – Percy knew what stood behind the door was a serial killer wielding an axe, but he still couldn’t look away as the hapless protagonist opened the door.

Percy couldn’t look away as Luke turned into a human inferno – releasing a shockwave that had Percy wobbling on his feet.

Percy should have closed his eyes.

Instead, he reached out and absorbed the nuclear blast, drinking in the energy until something parched inside him was finally satiated – for the moment.

The euphoria lasted for only a second. The husk of Luke’s burned-out body was a sobering dash of reality.

The demigod’s skin was a tattered robe slipping off his bones in bloody swathes. With horror, Percy realised that this was at least partially his fault. Kronos disintegrating might have created the explosion with its concussive blast, but Percy was the one who had ripped every ounce of divinity out of Luke when what he could gain from the remnants of Kronos proved insufficient.

Percy stumbled forward, struggling to expel the energy even now blending with the ichor in his own body, wishing nothing more than to return it to Luke.

He was too late.

“Ethan. Me. All the unclaimed. Don't let it … don't let it happen again,” Luke rasped out through a bloody mouth. His eyeballs flickered unseeingly across the ceiling of Olympus, blindly trying to detect the traces of a demigod in the sky even now displaying a star collapsing into itself. 

“I won't.” Percy swallowed, knowing that what he was about to say might be something beyond him, but unable to not answer the plea on Luke’s face. “I promise.”

Luke’s body went lax.

“Luke,” Annabeth let out a broken gasp from where she’d barely managed to crawl over enough to see the demigod’s last moments.

Percy couldn’t look at her, not when he was half the reason Luke was dead.

“Percy,” Grover said urgently. “Perce, you look like you’re about to blow up yourself.”

Percy – didn’t quite agree. The incandescent glow around him had dimmed, reduced to a soft shimmer even now illuminating the throne room in a one-meter radius around him. It might have been alarming, but Percy felt more settled than before.

And yet … he couldn’t dismiss the notion that the moment the ache in his body disappeared, an ache in his heart slipped in to replace it.

“Not you too!” Annabeth sobbed out, unthinkingly reaching out to touch him only to reoil with a burned hand.

Desperately, Grover broke out into a terrible, clashing melody that did nothing to ease the turmoil inside Percy.

“You’d be better off trying one of the songs to Apollo,” Percy told him exhaustedly.

Annabeth shook her head. “It wouldn’t work now,” she cried out, tears beginning to trickle down her face as her one uninjured hand hovered near Percy. “They’ve defeated Typhon – there’s no distraction left to mislead Apollo as to who’s praying to him.”

Grover just blew harder at his pipes, determined to forestall the inevitable explosion for as long as possible.

Dimly, Percy wondered where Hestia had gone. But he knew the answer even as he refrained from asking the question. The nuclear blast of Kronos combined with the sucking vacuum of Percy’s own efforts had been enough to terrify Hestia into temporarily fleeing.

She’d be back soon, he knew. All the gods would be back soon.

And Percy absolutely couldn’t reek of stolen divinity when they did.

He focused, trying to reach the dichotomous creature both soaring and slumbering inside him. He hated what he had to do. Absolutely loathed it. Trying to accept that when he’d torn into Kronos, he’d not just used him for parts but absorbed a part of him was repugnant.

But the longer he refused to accept it, the longer the energy inside him would remain a separate entity, remain outside the control of the wispy, radiant presence plugging up the holes in Percy’s soul.

Percy shuddered and opened up the sluice gates.

And whimpered as the energy and presence met and melded, Percy a thin glass wall being ground into shards between them.

“Percy!” someone shrieked.

But Percy couldn’t hear anything.

***

When Percy came to, it was inside a large chamber painted with soothing off-white tones, on sheets a cotton so soft they rivalled silk.

For a moment, memory and dreams tangled together. And then four shapeless smudges separated themselves from the walls and solidified into four people – out of which he only wished to see one.  

“Grover,” Percy croaked. “Hey man, stop crying.”

“Percy!” his best friend cried out before attempting to fling himself at the demigod.

“Hey now,” Apollo put out a restraining arm. “We don’t want to crush the patient.”

Despite his words, the god’s fingers twitched like he could barely stop himself from running his hands all over Percy. He looked like he couldn’t quite believe that Percy was right there.

Couldn’t believe that Percy was alive. 

“You’re going to be okay,” Annabeth stated firmly. Her voice, however, shook alarmingly and she couldn’t stop wringing her newly healed hands together.

The last person, and the one Percy had the most trouble meeting the eyes of, ran a hand through Percy’s hair.

Sombrely, Poseidon said, “She is right, Percy. Rest assured, even Zeus won’t refuse you your reward. He might not offer it, but ask for immortality, and my brother will grant it.”

The subtle threat in the god’s voice, albeit one aimed at Zeus, had Percy flinching despite himself. All of a sudden, all he could remember was the heartless treatment meted out to Icarus, how often Percy had prayed to his father in those troubled days before finally giving up.

“Now, now,” Apollo broke in. “Since everyone’s watched the miraculous hero wake up, it’s time for an equally tired demigod to get some rest.”

The god’s voice was pleasant – but it brooked no refusal.

That might have been enough to cow the mortals in the room, but Poseidon insisted. “I’ll remain.”

“I told mom I’d light the top of the Empire State Building blue to tell her everything was fine,” Percy whispered. “Please,” he pushed out words that cut into his mouth like barbs, “Dad, could you do that?”

Poseidon narrowed his eyes but nodded acquiescence. Unfortunately, Percy was pretty certain that the god understood a lot more form that request than the demigod would have wished.

Apollo waited only long enough for everyone else to vacate the room before asking cheerfully, “Why this animosity towards your father? Your biggest defender, isn’t he?”

His biggest defender turned his first murderer, yes. but Percy could acknowledge Apollo’s point. If he could forgive Apollo, the guy who had blatantly killed him multiple times, why not Poseidon?

Matters of the heart, however, rarely ever obeyed logic. How could he compare Daedalus and Poseidon and not resent the god?

Percy had prayed. Percy had revealed all in prayers and sacrifices aimed at the god – but Poseidon had steadfastly refused to even entertain the notion that he might be telling the truth.

Apollo had listened, had believed, and had remembered Percy even three millennia onwards – while Poseidon couldn’t even bother to make an offhand reference along the lines of, “Oh, there was once a guy, Icarus. He prayed to me and told me he was Percy Jackson, my son from the future. Funny, right?”    

“You do realise,” Apollo pointed out gently, “that it is only the last loop that anyone remembers? Unless you prayed to him then, your father wouldn’t know there was something to mention.”

Percy averted his eyes from the god, choosing to stare at the bedside table laden with vials rather than acknowledge the point.

What was a meaningless explanation compared to the staggering loss Percy had experienced the first time he’d attempted to breathe underwater only to surface choking, hacking out lungs burning from water they were never meant to inhale?

What was one missed opportunity compared to the thousand gaping holes Percy’s shattered bones had created on their way out of his body?

Strange how bitterness could be so all pervading that it could have you holding grudges on behalf of someone dead for millennia.

Apollo sighed. Out of the corner of his eye, Percy saw him spasmodically flex his fist, but the god’s next words carefully avoided addressing the teeming mess of issues between them.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve swallowed fireworks,” Percy admitted honestly.

And not all of them could be blamed solely on the emergency dam destruction in his own soul that he’d carried out in the throne room.

Apollo broke out into a grin. “Horrible, but nothing that won’t be resolved in a few minutes.”

Then, unable to help himself, the mischievous grin on the god’s face transformed into a small, soft little thing Percy felt the urge to protect for the rest of his life.

“I am so glad to see you, Percy,” the god confided with a little sigh. “I really did believe you were about to die. That neither the great prophecy nor your trip back in time proved fatal …” the god just sighed again, a dopey look on his face.    

Percy’s already straining heart began racing in his chest.

He struggled to sit up, inordinately fascinated by the way the sheet atop him pooled around his waist. It looked like a luminescent fabric draped over an LED stand. And yet – it was Percy’s body underneath that shone through with all the brilliance of a starry night.

Apollo helped him along, his stolid warmth both comforting and an inferno threatening to set Percy aflame.

“I suppose it wouldn’t be a terrible idea if we were to begin our journey towards the throne room,” Apollo mused. “While Uncle P was right that father is unlikely to refuse you immortality, it wouldn’t do to annoy him by being tardy. We don’t want spite to be a motivation in the decision. He might turn you into an immortal gerbil!”

Apollo winked at Percy before laughing at his own joke.

Percy just leaned into Apollo’s side, allowing himself to depend on the god’s sturdy frame. Just for now, he could trust the bare arm around him to prevent him from falling – could enjoy this closeness that he had a terrible suspicion would disappear the moment Percy expressed his wish.

Despite Apollo’s efforts, they entered the hall in the middle of Zeus pontificating on the bravery of the gods, and reluctantly extending some of the credit for their victory to Hades and Poseidon. With a last smile, Apollo left the demigod to take his throne. 

And then came the mortals’ turn. Thalia received help in filing up the ranks of the Hunters, which was at least half a reward for Artemis, in Percy’s opinion. Tyson received a prestigious but empty position as general of Olympus’s armies. Grover became a Lord of the Wild, and Annabeth received the opportunity to design the entirety of Olympus to her heart’s design.

And then came Percy’s turn.

“Percy Jackson!” Poseidon called out, pride shining from eyes the same colour as Percy’s. At that moment, there was no doubt that this was a father proud of his son’s accomplishments and exulting in the certainty that he would never have to see Percy die.

Percy pushed off the calm still lingering from the memory of Apollo’s steadying presence and walked over to bow before Zeus. After a pause, in a twisted reflection of his actions the first time he’d met his father, he bowed to Poseidon – second.

“A great hero must be rewarded,” Poseidon announced, eyes shining. “Is there anyone here who would deny that my son is deserving?”

Instead of piping up with protests, all the gods remained silent. The fact that Percy would proceed to explode in a spectacular fashion without their intervention seemed to be enough of a deterrent to prevent any objections.

“The Council agrees,” Zeus said grudgingly. “You may have one gift, Perseus Jackson. The greatest of them all, one not bestowed on a mortal in centuries. With the consensus of the entire Council, I can make you immortal.”   

Immortal, huh? Percy had experienced immortality before. The immortality of experiencing innumerable iterations of the same interminable incident.

He glanced back and caught Annabeth’s eye. Unlike two years prior, when Percy had stood transfixed in fear of Annabeth choosing to become a Hunter of Artemis, Annabeth only nodded fiercely at him.

Percy gulped.

Annabeth would rather have him immortal than dead in a few weeks. His father had browbeaten the entire council to the point there was no discussion of what gift Percy would receive. Even now, his mother was looking up at the blue windows of the Empire State Building and exhaling in relief.

Percy turned around and shakily got to his knees. Head bowed respectfully, he said, “I am honoured at this gift.”

“Of course, you are,” Zeus nodded in self-satisfaction. “I’ll have to tolerate you for eternity, but I suppose your father will be glad enough to have you as a lieutenant.”

“But,” Percy began carefully, “if it is possible, I’d rather have another gift.”

Chapter Text

“What?” Poseidon broke in incredulously.

Percy ignored the interruption. “Don’t get me wrong,” he explained. “Immortality is a great gift – just not for me.”

Every single time loop hadn’t meant just Percy’s death – it had been the death of every single person he’d gotten to know. What was life but the memories of living it? What was amnesia but a death of sorts? What was a time loop but an intolerable slog of watching every single person he loved die?

And they expected him to repeat that for the rest of his life?

“You’ll die if you don’t become immortal,” Athena pointed out, brow beginning to furrow in confusion as he went against her expectations.

I’d rather die.

Percy wasn’t foolish enough to say it, but the sentiment must have come across clearly enough with the way her nostrils flared.

“Percy,” Apollo’s voice was an unwelcome reminder of his past. Strangely enough, while the god’s face had changed over the years, his voice had remained the same ethereal, mind-numbing chime.

“It won’t be like …” the god broke off in frustration. “Fact is, you’ll be lucky to see next week if you refuse.”

“I’m not refusing a gift,” Percy told him.

But before Apollo’s face could lighten in response, Percy turned back to a thunderously frowning Zeus. “Lord Zeus,” he repeated politely, “If it is possible, I’d prefer another gift.”

Zeus’s eyebrows were a thunderstorm about to break out, but the god thought about it. “I suppose, if it is in our power, you can.”

Percy closed his eyes for a moment.

A reel of dead demigods passed behind his lids – Luke, Ethan, Silena, Beckendorf, Michael, and so many more.

Chris flashed into view, Chris as he was during Percy’s first year at camp – sullen, withdrawn, resentful. Stuck in what should have been his father’s camp but feeling an interloper nonetheless because he’d never been claimed.

Then Percy opened his eyes and gazed at Zeus with as much determination as he could muster – which was not an inconsiderable amount. “I wish that no demigod arrives at Camp Half Blood only to have to live at Cabin eleven because they haven’t been claimed,” Percy stated.

“Percy, what exactly do you mean?” Poseidon asked threateningly, looking one wrong word away from smiting Percy on the spot.

Percy refused to be cowed. “I mean, I want every demigod child to be claimed by the time they turn thirteen. I want there to be more than just twelve cabins at camp – I want there to be one for every god and Titan – and their children.”

“Now wait a second,” Apollo started, but Percy just spoke over him.

“The only reason Kronos was able to become such a threat is because the unclaimed demigods and the ones who were children of the minor gods and Titans felt resentful and betrayed. The reason so many immortals sided with Kronos is because they believed he would afford them more respect than what they had. Which is also why peaceful Titans like Calypso, and the gods and demigods on the other side should be pardoned – to prove we’re better than Kronos. That we’re going to accept, and train, and respect every single one of them.”

“You dare!” Zeus hissed. “You presumptuous–”

“The boy is correct,” Athena supported Percy reluctantly. “It was a strategic weakness to ignore our children. And more minor gods turned against us than even vowed neutrality. We would be remiss to not take any measures to gather the loyalty of our detractors when the opportunity is right here.”

Zeus snorted. “Perhaps. But a gift is very different from a demand, Athena. Even one couched in terms of a prevention tactic.”

“You should have had him swear on the Styx, boy,” Hades sneered, a cautious look in his eyes as he scrutinised Percy.

Nico might have convinced the god to save the day, but Percy had no doubts that Hades was still understandably wary of him.

“What would be the point?” Percy asked. “You all swore on the Styx to no longer have demigod children, but you’re the only one to uphold it. The pact of the Big Three didn’t work. The oath on the Styx didn’t work.”

Percy stared at Zeus and Poseidon, both of whom were vibrating with some sort of emotion Percy was too tired to decipher. “Forcing someone to uphold a promise doesn’t work. It’s a choice you have to make.”

He’d known that even while watching the life fade out of Luke.

“It’s a choice that I wish you to make,” Percy finished.

There was a rustling sound as the gods shifted in their seats, looking uncomfortable and attacked, yet also thoughtful.

Finally, with an unfathomable expression, Hermes asked, “All in favour?”

Reluctantly, but without dissent, the gods agreed.

The scent of a sea storm hovered around Poseidon as the god glowered at Percy in impotent fury.

It was only matched by the white-lipped glare on Apollo’s face.

Percy blinked at the floor in exhaustion.

And then toppled over onto his face.

***

Once again, Percy found himself waking up in the part of Apollo’s palace that constituted the infirmary. Except this time, he wasn’t greeted with the sight of two Olympian nurse maids. In fact, the only people at his bedside were Annabeth, Grover, and Thalia.

“Hey everyone,” Percy greeted feebly.

The three started from where they were apparently keeping vigil over his body.

“Percy!” Thalia burst out. “Are you an idiot? Do you even realise what you’ve done?”

“Just because I call you Seaweed Brain doesn’t mean you have to act like your head is literally filled with it!” Annabeth concurred in a strained voice.

Grover was the only one to reach the crux of the matter. Shrewdly, he asked, “Why is dying next week better than living into the next century?”

“I don’t want to die,” Percy refuted instantly, fisting the sheet covering him in agitation.

“And I didn’t want to become a Hunter, but the alternative was something worse,” Thalia retorted.

“We didn’t go through so much just to have you die of something fixable now, Percy,” Annabeth pleaded.

“They needed to promise this,” Percy tried to explain. “Immortality is something every god can offer – but this is something they all had to agree to.”

Thalia began frowning. “You’re planning to ask your father to turn you? Not into a god, but something more like what Artemis does?”

Annabeth shot a surprised look at Thalia. “Will that work?”

The other demigod shrugged cluelessly. “It has to now, doesn’t it? Not like he has any other options.”

Annabeth turned towards Percy, conflicted. “Percy,” she began hesitantly. “What you did was … very brave.”

“But very foolish?” Percy guessed, resentment beginning to creep in at this constant denunciation of his decisions.

“Very admirable,” Annabeth corrected. “But we’d rather you had chosen immortality instead.”

She averted her eyes, finding the weave of the sheets much more engrossing than anything on Percy’s face. In a softer voice, she added, “I’d much rather you live.”

Dread settled into the region recently uplifted by euphoria at successfully convincing the gods to be better.

Looking at that downturned face, those grey eyes downcast in fear for him – was all that was needed to drive home the acknowledgment of something Percy had always known but never received confirmation of.

Annabeth liked him.

Except Percy didn’t like her anymore. Not in that way.

“I,” Percy paused to clear his throat. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Annabeth’s head shot up, alarm lining her features. “No!” she shouted.

“Annabeth?” Grover called her name uneasily.

She took in a bracing breath. “Nothing. Just … can you leave? Both of you? I need to tell Percy something.”

Grover and Thalia exchanged knowing glances before vacating the room with alacrity.

Percy barely resisted the urge to plead with them to not abandon him.

Stuck in unbearable silence, Percy resorted to trying to trace shapes in the decorative swirls painted on the walls. The pale, iridescent trails were antlers playing through waves, hares clambering up mountains, a ship flying through the storms, a statue toppling.

“I don’t like you,” Annabeth blurted out. “Not like that.”

Percy turned to her in shock. “What?” he croaked.

Her expression just dared him to challenge her assertion when she repeated. “You’re my best friend. I love you. But I’m not in love with you.”

“Um.”

“So,” she barrelled on, “if you refused because you think you’re going to live some great mortal life with me, die as heroes, and then go to Elysium – don’t. We’re not …”

She took in a great shuddering breath before exclaiming in a wet gasp, “We’re not going to do that.”

Percy stared, heart breaking.

“You’re better off turning immortal,” Annabeth tried to convince him. “Grover and Tyson will live a couple centuries. Thalia and your father will last forever. There are so many people here – and you can always visit us in the Underworld. And we’ll reincarnate. You’ll see us again.”

By the end, she was pleading. “Please, Percy. Don’t do this. Don’t consider death somehow better than life.”

“Some things are worth dying for,” Percy told her gently.

“This isn’t,” Annabeth rejected. “Not like this. If you hate it so much, get Zeus to revoke it – history stands testament to his tendency to do it.”

Percy stared at her in surprise. “That … is not something I expected you to suggest.”

Annabeth waved a hand in frustration. “What? Did you think I’d keep beating my head against a wall? I’m a daughter of Athena! I find the weak point in a structure and bring it down with a single strike. You don’t want to remain immortal? Fine. Use it to heal yourself – and then return to being a demigod.”

Percy couldn’t help it – despite the serious topic of conversation, he broke out into soft chuckles. “That’s all well and good, Wise girl. But I don’t need a god to offer me immortality.”

At her confused frown, he confided, “I have something much better. I won’t be dying anytime soon.

“But,” she protested, “the glow …”

Percy shrugged. “Just indicates how much of me is closer to a god than a mortal. Not how close I am to death.”

“Your resistance is greater!” Annabeth breathed out. “I knew I saw it – even strikes that should have killed you left you without a scar. You bathed in the Styx.”

Percy grinned at her unabashedly.

(Percy hadn’t bathed in the Styx. He’d simply rewound his own time.)

Annabeth smiled back, a small lopsided thing that nonetheless expressed her sheer relief to have him there, even if different.

***

All his reassurance had fled out of the window by the time the festivities at Olympus came to an end.

Percy lay curled up in a ball, simultaneously shivering and sweating a softly glimmering liquid that left golden streaks against his white sheets. His stomach ached with a sharp pain reminiscent of a particularly carnivorous weasel nibbling at his guts.

All in all, he sorely regretted giving up on the shortest route out of sheer misery – and no amount of telling himself it was worth it sufficed when he had no guarantee the gods would even hold on to their agreement for a year, let alone eternity.

Perhaps, he thought hopefully, he could beg his father to temporarily bless him with immortality with no one the wiser, and then promptly take it back once Percy was healed.

The memory of the fury simmering on Poseidon’s face the last time the demigod had seen him, the absence of the god in Percy’s sickroom right now, and even the lack of Tyson, who would have definitely attempted to keep vigil over Percy unless forbidden to do so, broke into Percy’s daydreams.

Poseidon, Percy remembered, wouldn’t be coming. Percy had rejected a gift the god had offered. And unlike Zeus, Poseidon had taken it as an affront to himself.

Percy moaned in pain, the sound scratching his already hoarse throat bloody.

He didn’t know how long he struggled through the ceaseless agony before it began ebbing. It must have been a prolonged period of time though, because when he grew aware enough to pay attention to anything but the red-hot pulsing in his abdomen, Apollo had entered the room.

The god was sitting on the edge of Percy’s bed, idly twisting one of the rings on his middle finger. He must have noticed Percy’s torment – but nothing except bored indifference graced the god’s face. In fact, it wouldn’t have been a surprise had Apollo startled and said in affected surprise, “Oh, I didn’t notice you!”

The god had more class, or perhaps less patience, than to pretend at ignorance. His silence, however, boded nothing well.

“Well,” Percy gritted out. “Any conclusion yet? And I dying?”

“You're mortal,” Apollo answered uncompromisingly, unfeelingly. “You’re always dying.”

Percy glared, the reminder of his mortality even now raking a cheese-grater across his guts. “Alright,” he spat. “And am I likely to reach that unenviable state sooner rather than later?”

Apollo hummed, contemplating the golden glow crisscrossing the demigod's skin, marking out Percy's blood vessels without even the aid of any imaging technology. “Perhaps.”

For a fleeting moment, Percy considered broaching the subject even Annabeth had recognised. But being understanding in the face of this coldness was anathema.

“I wonder,” he asked instead, “do you still have a part of my soul? Does a part of me still linger inside you?”

Had Percy haunted the god’s every waking moment like the way Apollo was determined to not let the demigod’s death haunt him?

Apollo looked at him with dark eyes. “Now why,” he asked slowly, with a hint of menace tinging his voice, “would you assume that?”

Chapter Text

Percy recognised that he stood on a precipice. Either he could step back – or he could step forward and take the plunge.

The wiser decision would have been to recover enough that he wasn’t an invalid practically expiring on a hospital bed, until he had something concrete to offer a god historically challenged in love, but no one had ever called Percy wise. 

“Did you miss me?”

Apollo arched an imperious brow. “Miss you?” he asked, darkly amused. “Miss a brat that disappeared after blatantly lying to my face, with no indication as to whether he’d succeeded, or if we would soon be subject to an infestation of Titanic proportions? Why ever would I do that?”

The gentle mockery in that voice convinced Percy that contrary to his words, Apollo had, in fact, missed Percy.

“Icarus died,” Percy explained softly. “And the only way to not die myself was to kill Kronos – which launched me right back to my time. There was simply no opportunity to inform you of anything.”

The accusation of lying, however – that Percy found hard to refute. Hard enough that he averted his eyes from the person even now staring at him so piercingly that the demigod’s insides might as well have been exposed to the warm air.

Perhaps Apollo took mercy on him. He admitted, “I did think of you.”

Before the swooping sensation in Percy’s stomach had the chance to take hold, though, the god continued, “It is simply that I went on to experience quite a bit afterwards. More than two millennia, in fact.”

Percy’s heartbeat thudded like artillery fire in his ears, like thunder starting forest fires, and falling buildings, and dynamite.

A palpable haze of disappointment descended over his shoulders.

He understood. This was Apollo’s way of letting him know that though there might have been the beginnings of something between them, years had passed since. Years in which Apollo had moved on while Percy had … not.

Apollo rubbed the straining muscles Percy had involuntarily clenched in his disappointment, gazing at him intently.

Percy swallowed, tried to reorder his thoughts into some semblance of coherency and not just an insistent refusal to accept reality, but failed.    

“It’s not like I expected you to be some sort of bereaved widower wailing his sorrows to the sky,” Percy burst out, gaining a degree of satisfaction from Apollo’s discombobulated face. “But you clearly still felt something, considering you remembered the exact set of words to tell me even after your so many years.”

At Apollo’s silence, Percy demanded in frustration, “Do you mean to imply that means nothing? I get it if you’re currently with someone else.”

Though the prospect was an ache in his chest, it was something Percy was willing to accept – if only because gods being who they were, Apollo would get bored sooner or later. Leaving a vacant spot in his life for Percy to inveigle his way into.

“But if it really meant nothing, if I was the only one … then tell me now.”

Exhaustion crept in suddenly like a summer shower, an outpouring of rain when the skies should have been clear, blotched only by a blazing Sun indifferently radiant.

“Tell me now,” Percy repeated.

The demigod looked at Apollo with his heart in his throat, limbs shaky with more than just his recent attack.

And waited.

Waited for Apollo to tell him he was mistaken, that what was once pity was now simply gratitude. That the reason Apollo had helped Icarus was the same reason he now looked after Percy so attentively – because he was the key to Kronos’s destruction. 

The reason Apollo was angry at Percy’s refusal to accept immortality was because it meant Percy’s potential to someday be a powerful god was going unrealised. Not because it meant Percy’s death.

Apollo, however, seemed hesitant to answer.

Percy tried to tamp down the bubbles in his chest. Apollo simply couldn’t give a flat-out refusal with Percy’s pleading eyes fixed so desperately on him, but was equally unable to admit to something that wasn’t true.

The passage of time, though, made it impossible to completely squash out Percy’s hopes.

Maybe, Percy couldn’t help but think, Apollo wanted to say the past was nothing, but found it a difficult lie to voice when all of Percy’s prayers were daggers pinning the god down and demanding the truth.

Then Apollo spoke.

“We should talk about your situation, instead of hashing out old, insignificant matters,” the god pointed out calmly.

Percy sucked in a harsh breath, trying to ignore the fact that his chest felt caved in under a giant’s hammer. “That’s, that’s fine,” he agreed, voice raw.

Had Apollo ever been hesitant to answer? Because all the reluctance had disappeared from the god’s rapidly cooling eyes. When Apollo smiled, it was with a cutting curl to his lips that left Percy bleeding inside.

“As you might be aware,” the god explained as if to a toddler, “your ichor concentration is quite high. Too high, in fact. You’re literally dying from it.”

“I feel like I’m soaring,” Percy supplied contrarily. Soaring straight into the Sun perhaps, but not dying.

Apollo licked his lips, something covetous in the sharpness of his cheekbones before it was rapidly shuttered out. “It can feel that way. Unfortunately, you have the equivalent of an eucalyptus tree growing out of you. Wonderful plant – but disastrous for your body.”

Percy looked at the god incredulously.

“It’s leaching out all the water,” Apollo nodded knowledgeably, before proceeding to weave an alluring, uncompromising net Percy was unwillingly drawn into.

“The nutrients from your blood, even the air from your lungs is its to absorb or discard at will. And certainly, the situation is not devoid of its advantages. You are the recipient of scented leaves capable of covering up the smell of rot, essential oil to fight infection and repel maggots, even bark and stray branches to create replacement limbs the plant has devoured. But nonetheless, not something you want living off you, now, do you?” Apollo whispered.

The end of the monologue and the ensuing pause seeking an answer, kicked Percy’s brain into high gear. This was an opportunity to interrupt, not stare at Apollo, utterly enraptured by the web his words had spun.

“You do realise,” Percy pointed out hoarsely, “that you just compared godly essence to a virus taking over my body until I’m dead and some sort of weird viral organism is inhabiting the place I used to.”

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” Apollo hedged, disappointment showing on his face but for a moment before he expertly hid it. “You’re lucky actually, that your body is transforming. The first thing to change the moment you tipped over was your soul. A section of it must have transitioned into the ethereal light that is immortal essence and filled up all the missing parts. You’d be dead otherwise.”

Percy froze, quite certain that revealing just where the ethereal immortal essence had come from, would not go over well. Percy might be making it his own, but the vibrant creature inside him was still more pet than a part of him.

“Right,” Percy said uncomfortably. “I’m lucky. Don’t suppose I could get luckier and just yank all the extra ichor out. Consume a good load of antiviral medication.”

The pity in Apollo’s eyes was something Percy could have done without.

“Oh Percy, you haven’t yet understood, have you?” Apollo shook his head in biting sympathy. “You’ve begun ascending – except you have neither enough ichor nor enough faithful devotees to fuel the transition. Your only hope was accepting the offer of immortality father gave. Now that you have refused it, no one will extend it again.”

“Good,” Percy said forcefully, pushing away the pang of disappointment at losing the easy way out of this scenario Annabeth had proposed. “Because I don’t want immortality.”

He’d had quite enough of it already, thank you. “I want to return to being mortal. An alive mortal.”

Apollo reached out and stroked a hand through Percy’s hair.

Contemptuously, mournfully, the god replied, “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Percy. Once begun, there are only two possible outcomes. Immortality … or death.”

***

Percy gazed unseeingly at the horizon, the crashing of the waves in the distance a deafening soundtrack to his contemplation.

Slowly, unthinkingly, with no expectations of an answer, Percy cracked the shell off a peanut and tossed the kernel inside towards the sea.

Like an eager partner, the sea responded – extending a wave and snatching the peanut mid-air.

The wave coalesced into a bearded man dressed in a shirt with all the colours of the sea.

“Percy,” Poseidon greeted.

“Father,” Percy responded, mind mercifully blank.

“I heard you scream,” the god prompted.

Had he? It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, Percy acknowledged. The transitory pain of transformation, of dying and living by inches, had woken him up. The demigod had writhed in his bunk bed for an endless stretch of time before the budding deity slumbering within his skin (that Percy refused to accept was a part of him) took pity on him.

Sleepless, exhausted, and claustrophobic, Percy had stumbled out of cabin three and made his way to the beach under the light of the Moon. Where he’d proceeded to pull unshelled peanuts out of a pocket in his pyjamas that had no business being there.

“Oh,” Percy answered listlessly.

“Your friend prayed to me,” the god continued stiffly at this noncommittal response.

Percy didn’t say anything.

Poseidon opened his mouth before closing it again, clearly biting back words. Instead, the god walked out of the surf and took a seat on the sand beside Percy.

Softly, as if speaking to himself, the god said, “I don’t think the younger gods recognise it. There are very few still free who were ever close enough to him to identify his essence – and who have bothered approaching you.”

A flicker of alarm had Percy straightening from his slouch. 

But Poseidon made no threatening moves. In fact, he sounded downright approving when he continued, “I doubt even a close look would reveal anything disturbing to any but the most suspicious. You are draped in a cloak made of Pan’s essence. And beneath that are blinders of my nephew’s and my own powers. You pull the shades one way or the other depending on the individual attempting to analyse you.”

“You are being deliberately confusing,” Percy broke in shortly.

“What belongs to the sea,” Poseidon remarked pointedly, “will always return to the sea.”

“Father,” Percy started in frustration before clenching his mouth shut.

“Life, Percy,” Poseidon explained intently, “began in the sea. Everything returns to the sea. And the sea makes it its own.”

Percy met unearthly, bioluminescent eyes in shock.

“There is absolutely no reason,” Poseidon stated firmly, “why my father cannot return to the sea to nourish my son.”

Percy swallowed in trepidation. “You don’t think it’s … wrong?” he asked in a small voice.

“What would be wrong is if you ceased to exist,” the god retorted. “And your mother is not the only one to feel that way.”

Percy flushed, something hot and angry inside him strangely soothed by this declaration of care, if not affection.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “That I’ve been so …”

“An inevitable consequence of being mine,” Poseidon replied gently. “The sea is ever mercurial. As capable of a gentle sea breeze as of a storm that will reshape continents. And there is no telling when one will give way to the other.”

Percy looked up at the god imploringly, unable to put into words just why Poseidon’s approval and acceptance mattered so much after the months of haunting silence.

A slight wrinkle arose on Poseidon’s brow, but the god answered the unspoken plea. “I am here, Percy, whether as a helping hand or a watchful presence as you learn to create your own hurricanes.”

“You promise?” Percy pressed.

Poseidon shrugged. “Not on the Styx, I don’t.”

The god winked. “Though I suppose I can assure that I certainly mean to fulfil the vow now.”

Percy’s lips stretched into a tremulous smile.

“That’s enough,” the demigod responded, even as a hot lick of energy wrapped around his arm. “Now is all I ask for.”

Chapter Text

“What?” Sally uttered, a tremble to her voice that Percy hated.

“I was fine, mom,” Percy assured from where he was perched upon his mother’s lap.

Mortifyingly enough, during the course of telling his mother about his past year, the woman had first drawn him into a hug – and then kept on pulling him in further and further until he was seated on her lap like a little child.

The spacious living room seemed all too tiny with the sunlight streaming in through the open window. How could it be otherwise when Apollo had a high-definition view inside the Jackson-Blofis apartment – all the better to see Percy trying to avoid crushing his mother with his legs uncomfortably stretched out in front of the couch?

At least no one else was there, though with the gods’ abilities to roam around invisibly, who could say that with any guarantee?      

Embarrassment, however, seemed a distant concern with his mother so close.

How could he spare anything but the barest vestiges of his attention for someone else when his mother was right there? Focus on anything but the smell of jasmine-scented locks when she pressed a kiss to his forehead? Feel anything but the callouses on her fingertips when she brushed dark curls glinting with starlight away from his face?

Experience anything but gratitude when she stared into green irises interspersed with golden flecks – and didn’t flinch?

Percy barely restrained the urge to melt into her, a knot deep inside him finally beginning to unravel in the face of his mother’s acceptance.

“You weren’t fine. But you will be,” his mother stated firmly.

“Mom,” Percy breathed out.

She sniffed, struggling to control her tears. “Don’t worry about me, darling. You’re here now. And though you’re determined to see it through on your own, at least your father has promised to help if you were to falter.”

Percy nodded, still somewhat uncertain whether he’d dreamed that whole incident up.

His mother offered him a sad smile. “Don’t take what Annabeth said too hard, alright? It sounds like she just wanted to erase any reason you might have to remain mortal because she wanted you to live.”

“I know,” Percy whispered, unable to look her in the eye.

“Oh,” she gasped, perceptive as always. “Is it …Rachel then? But she became the new …”

Percy tried to smile. “Funnily enough, I got dumped before a single date. Thrice.”

His mother stared, horror briefly surfacing on her face before she reined it in. “Someone in the past then?”

Her voice shook at what that would entail for her son’s heart, but Percy only shook his head. Wryly, he thought that perhaps it might have been better if the rejection had occurred years ago and not just a week past.

Especially since he wasn’t certain what he’d do if Apollo ever did agree. That was the problem of trying to resume relationships that had never begun with millennia old gods – they made terribly pertinent points, such as having moved on from barely voiced sentiments. 

His mother tried to distract him. Stroking a finger across his cheek, she murmured, “I really don’t know what we’re going to do with your glow. I doubt makeup will make a dent on this.”

Percy’s head fell forward until he could tuck it under his mother’s chin. “Mom!” he whined. “Are you still thinking about school?”

“Why?” she asked archly. “Any other world-changing events you need to take time off for instead?”

Despite her attempt at humour, her voice quavered at the prospect of possibly losing her son again.

Percy tightened his arms around her, surprised once again at how physically frail his mother appeared to his newly heightened senses. She resembled nothing more than a network of blood vessels barely covered by a paper-thin layer of skin. If Percy tried, he could see beneath her pores into the red of her blood, into the yellow of her marrow – into the afterimages every second of her life left behind.

With effort, he drew back, looked her in the eye, and promised, “I’m not going anywhere, Mom. Possibly, not even to school. You should tell them I have something suitably debilitating and contagious. Like smallpox.”

His mother made a face. “You’ll be better off claiming the plague. That at least still occurs naturally.”

Percy grinned at her.

***

The grin had been firmly stamped out by the evening as he tried to stuff his brains for his English assignment.

Despairingly, the demigod wondered why they still had to study a language they’d already been practicing for so many grades. Why did he have to figure out literary analysis when simply becoming literate would have sufficed?        

Percy looked up from the words swimming on the pages at the quiet scoff to the side.

Somehow, encountering a god rocking the popstar look in his bedroom didn’t arrive as much of a surprise.

Now, had anyone asked Percy what precisely a popstar look entailed, he would have failed to provide a satisfactory answer. But somehow, the leather jacket, acid wash jeans, sunglasses, and windswept hair on Apollo definitely characterised that aesthetic.

Or maybe that was just Apollo. Actually, that made more sense. He didn’t think any of those articles were actually in fashion yet.

Instead of dwelling on his own word choice (yet – why had he called it yet and not still? What did he know about fashion?), he asked, “What are you doing here?”

Apollo made a face. “Watching you slog through unnecessary suffering, apparently.”

That could have been interpreted many ways. Percy chose to take the more immediate, less contentious route. “I kind of need to do this if I am to ever make it through high school,” he told Apollo.

“But you don’t,” the god pointed out.

This was rapidly veering into dangerous waters. “Aren't you the god of education?” Percy asked uncomfortably. “Are you sure you’re supposed to be dissuading me from studying?”

“Good of education,” Apollo answered sardonically. “Not,” he paused to take a look at the book Percy was futilely poring over, “Wuthering Heights.”

Without waiting for a reply to that rejoinder, Apollo hoisted himself on top of the study table.

Percy swallowed as the position highlighted Apollo’s thighs. The faded fabric of the jeans strained over the god’s muscles, drawing in all of Percy's attention.

Well, at least until the god spoke again.

“I went to see Icarus. Afterwards.”

Percy gaped at Apollo. Even when he tried to speak, he could only fumble for the right words, except not only did he not recognise what constituted right, anything he came up with seemed hopelessly puerile.

Finally abandoning any attempt at appearing suave and knowledgeable, Percy simply admitted, “I am uncertain what you want me to say. Whatever conversations you might have had with Icarus were all washed away by the Lethe.”

Well, all but the disorienting dream about Rhadamanthus that Percy was still mulling over.

“I didn't converse,” Apollo retorted. More sombrely, “There was nothing to converse with.”

Percy clenched his fists, staring unseeingly at the creased spine of his upended book.

It had always been a possibility, Percy admitted to himself. Considering Apollo had never gasped in horror at having two iterations of the same soul under his scalpel, it was highly likely the God was incapable of such minute distinctions.

Which took the prospect of Percy's soul not being the only one damaged from probability to certainty.

“Well, I'm still here, right?” he mumbled. “Hence, Icarus must have reformed sometime.”

It was still difficult to acknowledge his previous life as something he'd lived. It was relevant, yes. Percy thought – too much – about that person, having lived his life in stolen moments. But despite the similarities, despite the memories leaking past the sieve of the Lethe, it was difficult to reconcile his two lives.

Most days, he didn’t want to reconcile the two lives.

“He was already there,” Apollo said, voice flat like a discordant note. “He was also a senseless, brainless creature devoid of any higher reasoning. He just clung …,” Apollo broke off.

The God tapped his fingers against his leg in an upbeat rhythm designed to bleed off tension.

“Apollo?” Percy asked curiously, knowing he was being insensitive but unable to resist. “What happened to the piece of my soul inside you? Did you really digest it?”

Apollo pressed his lips together into a thin line.

Percy waited.

“He clung,” Apollo repeated. The miserable expression on his face, his insistent tone – all painted the sight of a broken soul desperately grasping onto the chiton of a panicked god.

Apollo closed his eyes. “I don't have it,” he sighed. “I can't give you any part of your soul, because I have already returned it.”

“But it wasn't all his,” Percy protested.

Golden eyes snapped open. “What precisely do you believe I did when I cut you open?” Apollo bit out. “That even some of the soul was assimilated, that you had a soul capable of reincarnation, was a miracle. Had I not known the necessity, I would have given up the very first time. Not wasted years keeping you intact, healing your wounds, blackmailing Persephone herself into helping fix you illicitly.”

“I'm not …” Percy began, only for Apollo to snarl.

“You are Icarus! Just because you took a dip in the Lethe doesn’t excuse you from your crimes. Does not negate the efforts made on your behalf.”

Percy jerked back at the vitriol aimed his way, eyes wide.

Apollo struggled to rein in his temper. “I would not be so insistent on separating yourself from your past,” he advised stiffly. “You are mortal enough that too many mistakes will prove fatal – and you are bound to commit many if you ignore the past.”

That was rich, coming from a god. “Shouldn’t you be avoiding repeating your own mistakes and protecting your Oracle?” Percy retorted.

Apollo shot a sharp glance at him. “And what is that supposed to mean?” he demanded. “What have you seen?”

“Nothing,” Percy replied.

Just a redheaded girl with green smoke pouring out of her mouth, the statue of an eldritch entity looming malevolently over her.

Apollo snatched the book off Percy’s table and idly flicked through the pages. Studiously unconcerned, he asked, “Uncle H cursed her, yes? My Pythia?”

“Don’t think cursing Nico is going to help,” Percy warned. The vision of Nico interrogating the dead as to the circumstances of his mom’s death had revealed that clearly enough. “It’s because your father tried to kill him that the Great Prophecy was set into motion at all. You don’t want to be the reason the next one begins.”

Apollo released a bitter scoff. “As if I’m not already being blamed.”

“What?” Percy straightened up in alarm.

Apollo waved a dismissive hand. “Never mind that. I came to give you a warning. I’ve already invested so much in your health, it would be a wate to see it go down the drain.”

That, Percy believed, was what they called the sunk cost fallacy. But who was he to deter Apollo from spending time with him?

“Pretty soon,” Apollo announced, “there won’t be any gods around to help you even if you were a second from death.”

Percy quirked a suspicious brow. “Why? Are you all committing ritual suicide?”

Apollo glared. “No, it’s because we’re going on a break,” he bit out.

Percy propped his head up on his hands, peering up at the god from behind the curtain of his curls. “Don’t suppose you’re here to extend an invitation to that break?” he tried coyly.

Apollo stared at him in bemusement.

“Because, you see,” Percy tried to convince the god, “what’s a better opportunity to convince me to try immortality than letting me experience what it entails?”

“Are you …” Apollo began disbelievingly, “asking me to seduce you?”

Percy blinked back innocently. “I don’t know. Maybe I am.”

Apollo spluttered. “That’s – I’m clearly the one – the nerve – you impertinent brat–”

The god fell silent, mind a thousand miles away.

Percy waited with bated breath, uncertain how he’d gone from making plans to convince a god to date him to informing him that Percy was the one who had to be persuaded.

Looking distinctly unimpressed, but also unable to quite put a finger on how he was being bamboozled, Apollo said, “I can’t take you on my break. But I suppose … I could take you out.”

Percy beamed at him. “I’d like that,” he replied softly.

The way Apollo stared back, transfixed, was enough to send a flush up Percy’s ears. 

Chapter Text

“I love your mother’s cooking,” Apollo moaned in pleasure.

Considering Percy was busy handfeeding Apollo some of his mom’s sandwiches while the god lazed about with his head on Percy’s lap, yes, Percy rather understood that.

“Much more than you like spending time with me, I take it?” Percy joked even as he ran his free hand through Apollo’s curls.

Seated under a tree in an empty park, basking under the gentle sunlight while enjoying a picnic, Percy was conscious of a certain avarice.

A private rendezvous, secluded from the world – a part of it yet apart. Their only companion the wind rustling through the leaves, with even the clouds having departed to provide them with some much-needed solitude.

Percy wanted to capture this moment and freeze it in the palm of his hand – perfect in its constancy. 

“Are you jealous?” Apollo chortled, though not before he’d finished his mouthful.

“Do I have any reason to be?” Percy inquired with amusement.

Apollo pretended to think about it, his sun-kissed skin gleaming with a celestial light. “Your mother is a remarkable woman,” he mused. “And certainly, the way she treats me is familiar without being disrespectful – a thing you have yet to achieve!” The god wagged a finger at Percy.

Percy grabbed the finger and pressed a light kiss to its tip. “I am very respectful,” he vowed. “I’m feeding you from my own hand – do you know the number of people who have been granted that honour?”

Apollo’s shoulders shook. “An honour, is it?”

Percy nodded solemnly. “Don’t you know? Its very scarcity drives the price up.”

Apollo offered him an upside-down smile before reaching up to take Percy’s hand and tangling their fingers together, his grip warm and comforting.  Though, if Percy thought about it, everything about Apollo was warm. A bonfire radiating heat even in the coldest winter, a luminescent presence lighting up the darkest night – and an inferno razing everything in its path if thwarted.

No amount of charm and pleasantness could wipe the memory of a furious Apollo from Percy’s mind. He wasn’t sure he wanted it to. The rage was just as much a part of the god as the cheer. Choosing only one seemed … disingenuous somehow.

“Want to go to an observatory?” Apollo asked casually. “Urania is doing a session.”

Percy wasn’t especially interested in listening to one of Apollo’s exes drone on about how the Greeks had put perfectly fine individuals into the sky without so much as a by your leave, but the hint of anticipation buried in Apollo’s voice encouraged him to agree.

“Sure.”

“Way to sound enthusiastic.”

Percy shrugged. “Hey, shouldn’t you be glad I’m agreeing to something you like because it’s you who likes it?”

“But I’m trying to find things you like,” Apollo complained lightly. His hand, however, turned into solid stone before relaxing back into a facsimile of fragile flesh.

Percy grinned down at the god, choosing to ignore for the moment that the only reason Apollo was being so very nice was because the god was convinced he could persuade Percy into accepting immortality.

That the only reason Apollo was even pretending to date Percy was because the god believed he could change Percy’s mind and not have a dead lover at his hands.

“You certainly know a few things I like,” Percy teased.

Apollo pouted. “I better be one of those – and at the top of the list at that,” he threatened.

Percy only laughed in reply, most of his attention caught instead by the streak of light that emanated from a delivery truck heretofore absent from their surroundings.

Now, brown trucks at the side of an otherwise empty road were not suspicious by nature. However, when the solitude was ensured by a god, and the truck sported the words Hernias are us, the shiftiness grew pretty definitive.

Then Percy blinked and the words rearranged themselves into Hermes Express.

“Why is Hermes spying on us?” Percy asked curiously. Strange as it might seem, not for one moment did he consider that Apollo might have ordered something for them. Apollo was a god – when he took you out, you knew it. Rest of the time, Percy better have the dough or he’d be forced to clean dishes to pay the bills.  

Hence a homemade picnic.

That Hermes had intruded on.

Apollo sprang up in an instant. “He better not be up to something nefarious,” he uttered darkly before striding off towards the truck.

Percy shot a regretful look at the remains of their lunch and scrambled off the bedsheet after his maybe-boyfriend.

He was just in time to watch both gods point a finger at each other and echo in comedic synchronicity, “What are you doing here?”

“Hermes!” Percy butted in. “Fancy seeing you here? What’s up?”

There were certain gods who warranted a more obsequious approach – but Percy rather thought there had been enough heart-to-hearts between them for him to be casual with Hermes.  

The god gazed at him miserably. “Why’d you have to be with Apollo?” Hermes wailed. “I’d even have preferred that girl!”

“Unfortunately,” Percy replied sardonically, “my date with Annabeth was yesterday.”

“What.” Apollo intoned flatly.

Percy rapidly backtracked. “Date as in meeting. A perfectly friendly, perfectly platonic outing!”

It didn’t remove the annoyed expression from Apollo’s face. “What did you want Percy for?” he asked Hermes shortly.

“I’m not going to tell you!” Hermes said incredulously, even as he nervously wrung his hands together. His empty hands together.

“Where’s your staff?” Percy questioned suspiciously.

Hermes winced.

“You lost my caduceus!” Apollo shrieked.

“My caduceus,” Hermes protested petulantly. “And I didn’t lose it – it got stolen!”

Apollo crossed his arms. “By whom?”

“Cacus,” Hermes growled.

“Who?” Percy interrupted when Apollo simply nodded in recognition.

“A giant,” Apollo replied with a scowl. “A smaller one – and clearly a stupider one considering he dared steal my cattle and my caduceus.”

“My caduceus,” Hermes corrected futilely.

“And I suppose you want me to go retrieve it?” Percy guessed, unimpressed. “Even though you know exactly who took it, and presumably, where he’s hiding it.”

“Absolutely not,” Apollo refuted instantly. “I’m trying to convince him to accept immortality,” he explained at Hermes’ instant scowl.

“But he’s not immortal yet,” Hermes pointed out. “And quests are what demigods are made for.”

Apollo’s brow furrowed in sudden thought – and Percy rapidly backed away. “Absolutely not,” he refused. “I am not going after a thief just because you can’t be bothered.”

With a bright smile abruptly gracing his face, Apollo whirled onto Percy. “But you see, Perseus, Hermes is right. As a demigod, you kind of have to go on god-given quests. But were you to turn immortal …” the god trailed off leadingly.

Percy quirked an eyebrow. “Really? You’re really trying that angle?”

“Think of Martha and George!” Hermes cajoled. “Who knows what that brute could be doing to them!”

“If you’re that worried, why don’t you go yourself?” Percy demanded.

Hermes recoiled. “I can’t have anyone know my symbol of power’s been stolen!”

At the burgeoning scowl on Percy’s face, Apollo hurriedly added. “And because it’s safer. You go chasing a petty thief only to find you’ve trespassed into someone’s domain and now you have a war on your hands. Not worth it. Better to just send a demigod.”

“Because you can always deny any involvement and hang them out to dry?” Percy inquired dryly.

“It’s the plausible deniability that matters, Percy,” Apollo explained superciliously. “The possibility of innocence more than its actual presence.”

“And we’ll help,” Hermes nudged Apollo.

“We will?” Apollo asked in confusion before revising his words, “I mean, of course we will.”

“Why?” Percy demanded warily.

Not that this indicated his acceptance of the quest, but it did seem just slightly dubious. Certainly, both gods had assisted on the quests they’d assigned him – but Percy would have to be absolutely brainless to not suspect ulterior motives at this stage.

“A display of how smoothly a quest proceeds with a god surreptitiously helping in the background,” Hermes said quietly.

Percy froze, struck straight through the heart.

A god helping in the background – a god who would actually ascertain that the people on the quest did not die. No silly sidesteps to soothe his ego, no increasingly ludicrous sacrifices to retain his blessing, and ultimately – a joyous return home with all members of the party alive.

Percy could be that god.

“So,” Apollo asked softly. “Will you do it?”

Percy knew he was being manipulated.

It didn’t stop him from inquiring further into the matter.

“And how precisely do you intend to help without anyone else finding out? The no interference in mortal matters rule still exists, does it not?” Percy questioned testily.

Both the gods looked at him with identical deadpan expressions.

“You do realise,” Apollo pointed out, “that the issue lies in the action and not the deception, right? All that is required is a somewhat plausible excuse to explain away your actions – ideally one father would accept if not approve of.”

“Like?”  

“Well, that’s for you two to find out,” Hermes responded while pulling Apollo in front of him. “I won't be helping, just him.”

“Just him, huh?” Percy asked, unimpressed.

“I can't be seen running around like a headless chicken!” Hermes exclaimed. “They’ll think something wrong!”

“And they won't if they see me running around?” Apollo interrupted, unimpressed.

“You can be a besotted beau,” Hermes stressed. “Me – they’ll wonder.”

As if to negate any future attempts to inveigle him into his own quests, Hermes promptly vanished.

Percy crossed his arms. He might be humouring the gods, but that did not mean he was going to make it easy.

Percy was going to be the most recalcitrant, incompetent demigod in the history of forever – and Apollo would have to demonstrate that a sufficiently motivated god was enough to overcome even that.   

Apollo took in the empty road, devoid of even Hermes’s truck, Percy’s narrowed eyes, and the picnic blanket flying away in the wind.

“Now,” he began, “Cacus is a fire-breathing giant. Our first course of action, therefore, must be to make you fire resistant.”

An ordinary demigod wouldn’t even remember who Cacus was, let alone have ready access to Medea’s Sunscreen to prevent burns.

“I'm already resistant to fire,” Percy remarked.

“No,” Apollo corrected. “You are heat resistant. That is an entirely different matter to being unaffected by the flames engulfing you.”

“I survived a volcanic eruption with just my heat resistance, you know?” Percy commented archly.

The disturbed expression on Apollo's face indicated pride was not the emotion swamping the god at the moment. “Be as it may,” Apollo said testily. “Fire resistance is a must.”

Percy waited.

Apollo shuddered. “Alright, I suppose that’s on me. The flames will just … happen to miss you. Accidentally.”

That could be very useful indeed. Instead of showing any approval at the plan though, Percy asked, “Where do I find him?”

Apollo slapped a hand to his forehead. “You’re going to be difficult about this, aren’t you?”

Percy nodded agreeably. “Very.”

***

“Cacus breathes out fire. It’s the same issue I have with my horses. The slightest slip, and they set the place on fire,” Apollo had chattered. “And what do you know, there’s recently been an uptick in gas explosions in the meatpacking district in Manhattan – so he might be there.”

Obstructive as only an ignorant demigod just discovering the gods could be, Percy mused to himself, “What is this voice in my head? Something to be ignored, yes?”

Apollo scowled. “Just follow the sunlight,” he growled before vanishing.

And so – Percy found himself on a crash course for a place recently plagued with eruptions. Though really, why couldn’t Cacus have retired from his life of crime and become a chef or something? Gas was expensive – the giant could have had a lucrative career. Especially since the entire Meatpacking District had been transformed into a tourist central with sidewalk vendors doing a brisk trade.  

Finding the entrance to Cacus’ lair wasn’t difficult. The sunbeams led him straight to an open manhole capable of swallowing Hermes’s entire truck. Neither the police tape around it nor the sole policeman attempting to maintain a cordon prevented Percy from climbing down the rungs inside the pit.

When his feet finally hit the ground, it was a with a splash that echoed with disproportionate loudness in the large cavern.

Percy ran an assessing glance around him, taking in the rock walls covered with broken brickwork, pipes, and the other detritus of abandoned construction. And in the middle of it - a battered bulldozer, cars stuffed full of tourist paraphernalia (including department stores’ worth of clothes and bags haphazardly thrown about), and a scaffold with the rotting, skinned, and gutted carcasses of cows hanging from it.

Percy wrinkled his face in disgust. The ideal reaction now would be climbing right back up the ladder and returning to the surface – but a demigod on a quest rarely had that luxury.

It was with trepidation slowing down his steps that Percy skirted the flea market and walked over to the twenty-foot diameter tunnel on the opposite side of the cave. He might not be Grover with the supernatural ability to smell monsters, but he was no slouch at detecting danger – and that tunnel reeked HAZARDOUS.

Percy was right. Before he was even halfway to his destination, an orange-haired, ten-foot-tall giant dressed in a red velour housecoat and pink Valentine boxers stepped out of the tunnel.

Percy thought about it for just an instant. Thought about ducking behind the bulldozer, holding his breath, and hunkering down until the giant disappeared.

Then, with a curse aimed at his own foolishness, he stuck his feet to the ground, took out Riptide, and waited.

It didn’t take long for Cacus to spot the faintly luminescent demigod, what with Percy’s continued inability to conceal his veins of gold.

Cacus frowned. “What are you? A demigod but also … not?”

The confusion didn’t stymie the giant for long. He shrugged and grinned. “Either way – breakfast!”

Percy only had a moment to brace his roiling stomach before Cacus snatched one of the spoiled cow carcasses off the scaffold, cooked it in his red-hot fiery breath – and ate the entire thing in three massive bites.

Chapter Text

Before Percy got snapped up as a palate cleanser, the demigod put his considerable powers of persuasion to work. “How do you know I’m not a customer instead?”

Cacus laughed. “A customer? Well, why not? What do you want? I sell everything. If I don’t already have it, I can get it for you.” The giant grinned leadingly. “For the right price.”

Percy frowned, something tickling the edges of his comprehension. The fledgling deity inside him was remembering something – something that had taken place in this very place.

“I’m looking for something special,” Percy replied, stalling for time. He was still barely figuring out how to coexist with the amalgamation of his own self high on power and the vestiges of Kronos, but he already knew that if his immortal persona stirred – it was important.

“Real magic. But,” Percy threw a derisive glance at their surroundings, “I suppose you wouldn’t have anything like that.”

Cacus rubbed his hands together. “You would suppose right – high end merchandise is stored in a secure location. But I assure you. If I don’t already have it in stock, I can steal it from someone who does.”

“Hermes’s caduceus,” Percy announced confidently.

All the glee of gaining a discerning, open-handed customer disappeared. Face red and eyes narrowed into beady slits, the giant snarled. “I should have known. Hermes sent you, didn’t he? What are you, his kid?”

Percy bit his lower lip hard enough to draw breath, before gritting out, “Probably not. Certainly, the god has never claimed me despite my living in his cabin.”

The ordinary demigod, even now, was one ignorant of the gods – even the one that was their parent. Percy couldn’t throw his name around as the saviour of Olympus and defeater of Titans. A new demigod on their first quest might not even know how to properly swing the celestial bronze sword in their hand, let alone have intimidating accolades to their name.

Before the giant got any unsettling ideas, however, Percy added, “But if you think the Olympians are going to ignore you stealing one of their symbols of power, you’ve got another think coming. It’s better for everyone if you hand over the staff and we can all just forget about this incident.”

Cacus chortled and summoned Hermes’s staff from the ether.

Percy watched the perfect materialisation in envy – he struggled to open a portal into the pocket dimension every immortal seemed able to access anywhere except in his pockets. Forget summoning anything except peanuts.

It was a relief to hear Martha and George complain and ask to be freed. It was not a relief when the giant smacked the staff against the nearest animal carcass and turned it into stone.

“Apollo,” Percy muttered under his breath while rapidly backing away. “I know you said you’d turn away flames – but what about some anti-petrification mandrake juice? Or even better – a hazmat suit capable of resisting everything!”

Apollo, the slacker, didn’t respond.  

Cacus raised the staff in triumph and exclaimed, “Ha! I had my doubts, but now I ‘m convinced. Stealing this staff was an excellent idea!”

It was Thanatos and his disquieting proclamations all over again.

A haze settled over Percy’s vision, tinting the whole world in grey. Slowly, the darkened figures of two indistinct people emerged out of the fog. Consisting of fumes, wreathed in wispy trails disappearing into the walls of the rocky chamber, the figures resembled smoke signals transmitted by the earth itself.

Cacas asked apprehensively, “The staff of the messenger god? What good would that do?”

“It’s not what good it would do in our hands that matters,” the oily voice of the other, vague figure answered. “It’s what its absence will do to the Olympians. Without the caduceus, that Olympian won’t be able to pass on any messages – and a breakdown in Olympian communication is only the first step to defeating them.”

“That’s what everyone thought about Kronos,” Cacus refuted. “He’s dust now, isn’t he?”

“But there are other people who still seek to oppose them,” the other person pointed out.

“And you’re a better prospect?” the giant asked sceptically.

“Perhaps not,” the man admitted. “But surely there is one person even you must agree we can all support.”

At some unseen cue, Cacus exclaimed, “Gaea!”

“She stirs even as we speak,” the man proclaimed.

At the giant’s silence, the man cajoled, “Just imagine what you could do with the caduceus at your fingertips. You could go anywhere, steal anything, and sell whatever you like for any price your heart desires. And no one would be able to stop you. You’d be even more powerful that Hermes himself.”

Percy didn’t need visual confirmation to ascertain Cacus’ avarice.

“Yes,” the giant breathed out, his breath a plume of red smoke that spread around the entire cave.

The vision was so realistic that Percy’s nose even wrinkled as smoke tickled it. Then Percy felt the growing heat along his clothes, heard the shrieks in his head to “Jump left!”, and realised he’d missed something all too important.

Percy jumped left, dropped to the floor, and continued rolling to extinguish the flames merrily trying to gain purchase on his fire-resistant body. The lack of pain did nothing to convince Percy of the state of his flammability – his flickering sight was still plagued by afterimages of a suited individual exiting the cave, but that didn’t mean any such person was currently present.

Percy could only listen for the warnings from George and Martha and hope they were better at translating their directions into ones from his point of view than they were at staying focused on things other than rats.

But as he rolled around blindly, crashing into cars and bag stands and collecting bruises with abandon, the smoky darkness began coalescing into tubelike structures. It was more the memory of water flowing within pipes than the actual waterlines and sewers, but it was enough to remind Percy of their location.

And the fact that he was the son of the Sea God again.

Percy reached for the water just above his head, and once found, summoned it through the broken pipes. Eager to obey, eager to surround him and wipe out the contamination of other domains, the water rushed in with the force of a sea storm.

Percy allowed the dirty sewage water to carry him up through the tunnel he’d descended down, jumping from current to current without any heed for the cursing of the giant below him.

Not that Cacus remained inside his underground lair for long – within minutes of Percy being deposited on the street, a giant explosion took out half the street. A blue laser beam shot out of the caved in section of the street and carved out a section of a building near it.

Percy gulped and ran.

“Apollo!” he shouted. “Now would be a good time to help. I do not fancy getting incinerated by laser mode!”

Not with the stitch in his side that had no right existing. Not with the burgeoning headache threatening to split his head open. Not with the burning, golden liquid dripping from his nose.

What had started as an attempt to test a god’s ability to interfere in a quest without Zeus finding out, had rapidly transformed into a real life or death quest – and Percy had no idea how to break out of it.

Stumbling, tottering, eyes barely open to the obstacles in his path, Percy tried to direct Cacus away from the innocent pedestrians on the street. But this was New York – wherever he looked, people walked, talked, sat, and just existed in a constant flurry of motion that left blurry imprints of their presence in the very air.     

Percy found himself standing in the middle of High Lane Park without any notion of how he’d managed it. His stomach bubbled, as if filled with a noxious mixture his insides were desperate to expunge as soon as possible.

A burning liquid crawled up his throat and Percy threw up.

His head hurt.

He threw up again.

When he blinked swimming eyes clear, the sight of the specks of gold in the red congealed mass on the ground worsened the apprehension already zinging through him.

That … didn’t seem right.

All he received was a faint sense of apology from his other half before the ethereal presence Percy shared half his soul with drew into itself.

Percy coughed and gagged, throat convulsing to expel even more of his insides, and threw up bright red, fresh blood. He panted – throat strangely soothed by the flow of the cooler blood over the burns left by the previous ichor tainted mass.

Light bent strangely around him, as if reflected by innumerable mirrors, before a blue laser blew out a chunk of earth just to his right.

Percy twisted to his left, instinctively trying to escape, only to collapse panting on his side.

He gritted his teeth, trying to force himself upright despite feeling like Apollo was opening him up again for surgery, except this time without anaesthesia.

“I’ll kill you!” Cacus’ shout came as if travelling underwater from a long distance. Despite its muted quality, the voice grated unpleasantly against Percy’s ears.

Another burst of laser flew towards Percy before being redirected to the side. Miraculously.

Eyes shut, hands physically trying to keep his insides where they belonged, and struggling to breathe past the spasms in his throat, Percy just lay there.

He could … he would … once Cacus came closer …

A bout of coughing racked his body – and culminated in Percy throwing up what felt like part of his stomach lining. Certainly, the pain in his stomach was indicative of some sort of acid injury.

He blacked out for a bit.

***

When Percy came to, the pain had subsided to a dull throb. His stomach only occasionally twinged with a stabbing sensation, while his headache had disappeared and left a remarkable clear-headedness in its wake.

He couldn’t have been unconscious for long because Cacus had just arrived on the platform occupied by Percy’s battered body.

“This thing is useless!” Cacus grumbled, shaking Hermes’s staff in frustration. “I have to do everything myself!”

As Cacus took another step towards Percy, the grass twined around his foot and held fast.

The giant tripped.

The caduceus clutched in his hand went rolling out of reach. Seizing the opportunity, Percy struggled to his hands and knees and lunged after the staff.

The moment he touched it, however, he recoiled.

“Martha? George?” he asked hesitantly, holding his smarting hand close to his chest.

“Is that you, Percy?” Martha inquired in surprise.

There was no further time to contemplate the veritable electric shock preventing him from touching the caduceus.

With an enraged howl, Cacus raised his head up, turned, and released a column of flames at Percy.

Eyes wide at the sight of his approaching death, Percy slammed his hands against the ground – which responded by rumbling alarmingly before rising up into a three-foot-tall wall.

The earthen bank absorbed the flames and prevented even the heat of it from reaching Percy.

The demigod stared at the wall he had summoned, simultaneously surprised, and having predicted this outcome.

What the …

Mind whirling with the realisation, Percy grabbed the caduceus again. The same electric shock assaulted him, but this time Percy resisted the urge to let go. Instead, he raised the tip of the staff just over his earthen shield and instructed, “Martha, George, laser strike!”

As if guided by divine intervention, the blue beam of death ignored impediments such as a moving target, not knowing where that target even was, and an inexperienced user.

The bazooka in Percy’s hands demolished the top of the wall, travelled through steaming air, struck the rising figure of the red giant, and disintegrated Cacus into so much sand.

Percy dropped the caduceus, hands stinging from having held the object despite its vociferous protests.

Resentfully, he wished the staff had reacted this negatively to the giant as well – then, maybe, it could have avoided getting stolen.

“That’s how it’s done!” George cheered.

Martha was more polite. “Thank you, Percy,” she said. “And we’re sorry about shocking you – it’s just the defence system for gods that haven’t been added to the exceptions.”

Chapter Text

Marth’s words rang through Percy’s head.

“Thank you, Percy. And we’re sorry about shocking you – it’s just the defence system for gods that haven’t been added to the exceptions.”

“I’m not a god,” Percy bit out.

The snake paused before bobbing her head in agreement. “No, you’re not,” she agreed. “If you were, you wouldn’t have been able to pick us up at all unless expressly offered by someone with the right to do so.”

And yet, despite her perfectly logical words, Percy couldn’t deny the thread of disbelief in her voice.

But he refused to acknowledge it, refused to brook any dissent. “Right,” he agreed.

The two intertwined snakes took advantage of having returned to their usual form wrapped around Hermes’s staff to stare at Percy. Percy stared back.

“You look strange,” George finally broke into the silence.

“I’m a star-spangled banner,” Percy blurted out.

But once the subject had been broached, Percy could no longer pretend the only extraordinary occurrence of that day was a fire-breathing giant terrorising the streets of New York.

He looked down at his hands. Saw pale flesh undamaged from the recent travails.

Percy swallowed down the tickle in his throat.

This was alright. Better than alright. The pain had disappeared, so really – he’d anticipated this.

(Better no damage than no sensation from scorched nerves.)

The return of his usual flesh tone, uninterrupted by any glowing lines or random sunbursts of exploded blood vessels, however – well, disconcerting was one word to describe it.

Percy closed his eyes and reached inside, certain that he knew what he was going to find yet desperately hoping he was mistaken.

He wasn’t.

What had once been a room partitioned in two by a glass pane was now one occupied by a storm scoring lines into the walls of his mind with the shards of its prison.

A childish presence poking and prodding in search for a response, callously curious to discover everything denied it.

A quiescent storm lying in wait for more – but one whose presence wrecked Percy’s body with every second of its existence.

Percy opened his eyes to the worried, reptilian gazes of Martha and George.

“I’m not a god,” he insisted like a broken recorder.

“No, love,” Martha agreed.

It sounded like, “If you say so.”  

“What was that?” Apollo’s voice demanded from behind him.

For a moment, the churlish desire to ignore the god almost overwhelmed Percy. What gave Apollo the right to come to Earth once any possibility of a fight had been firmly squashed and then make demands of Percy?

But he was the only person in the vicinity. The only one who’d watched with breathless agony as Percy writhed on the ground, the only one who’d twisted the rays of light to conceal Percy from harm, the only one who’d seized laser and redirected it.

“What was what?” Percy asked tiredly.

At this rate, all his attempts to slowly expend the godly essence inside him until all that remained was the presence plugging up his soul were doomed to failure. How was he supposed to exhaust a storm that just kept growing with every action he took – and even his every inaction?

“Your just lying there, waiting to be killed!” Apollo shouted.

Percy’s head snapped up, only just now grasping that Apollo was … truly angry.

The god’s entire body smouldered, shooting up sparks from every exposed inch. Apollo glared at Percy, face contorted in fury and eyes shadowed under tangled curls in an inexplicably menacing manner.

The t-shirt and jeans he’d been dressed in for their date, a casual attire Percy had wished nothing but to slide up and up until it revealed skin the demigod had never known the value of until Apollo had forgone all those cloaks, chitons, and loincloths, had been replaced by literal armour.

Apollo looked on the warpath – and out of a lack of any other available targets, seemed likely to express that rage on Percy.

“I had an attack,” Percy protested, the word laden with a month’s worth of episodes where Percy could only collapse and ride out the sensation of his body being consumed.

“In the middle of a fight!” Apollo snarled.

“That was always a possibility,” Percy snapped back. “Just because I’ve grown better at managing it doesn’t mean the ichor burning through me has disappeared.”

Apollo pointed to the patch of earth glistening with the remnants of Percy’s insides. “This isn’t managing,” he accused. “This is expelling your melted up stomach!”

Don’t catastrophize.

Percy’s mouth burned with the desire to scream at Apollo to not make this worse, to not take the acid bubbling inside him and nurture it into a fountain of lava. But he knew – if he escalated, if he snapped right now, Apollo would give back as good as he got.

Worry would transition right back into the indifference Percy so hated.

Apollo would distance himself. Again.

“Sometimes,” Percy gritted out, body shivering with the cold wind of vulnerability, “I get too distracted to remember that I have to keep the ichor moving.”

Even now, recalling Poseidon’s disturbed expression as Percy sensed the unnatural movement inside his body and substituted Poseidon’s healing touch with his own fumbling, amateur efforts, made his bones ache with the memory of the sea as hard as stone.

Perhaps because it was his own ichor, perhaps because the godly substance was surrounded by blood that was half water, but Percy could manipulate the illusive liquid.

Poseidon took responsibility for teaching the trick to Percy.

Percy didn’t know who they were fooling.

“You!” Apollo cried out, wordless in sheer rage, before dropping to his knees and yanking up Percy’s t-shirt.

Percy tried to pull back, but quick as a striking snake, Apollo wrapped a restraining arm around the demigod. Percy fumed, but despite his newfound power, found it impossible to escape the god’s grip. It left him completely vulnerable to Apollo’s searching palm when it landed on his abdomen.

Percy winced, but the tantrum he braced himself for failed to materialise.

Apollo closed his eyes. His head fell forwards until it rested in the crook of Percy’s neck.

All of a sudden, the argumentativeness slid out of Percy, leaving only bone-deep exhaustion in its wake.

“I didn’t think I’d lose control,” he confessed. “I really thought this would be – manageable.”

“Part of your stomach has changed to godly essence,” Apollo whispered.

Percy flinched at the confirmation of something he’d been dreading.

Percy might have let Annabeth labour under the impression that he had a Styx reinforced body capable of withstanding ichor – but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Percy simply had a higher-than-average tolerance to godly lifeblood.

But that just left him vulnerable to its effects on his body – left him helpless to resist the way it seemed determined to transform him through a baptism of fire.

Apollo released a shuddering breath before a crawling sensation made Percy want to scratch the insides of his own blood vessels. He resisted the urge to express any discomfort, knowing Apollo would take it badly.

Knowing Apollo would blame himself for the fact that the only palliative to Percy’s terminal condition he’d discovered hurt.

Ichor liked to pool – it liked to concentrate all its efforts in a particular location, feed on all available fuel, create the little bit of godly essence that was its purpose – and then move on.

“I’m sorry,” Apollo whispered, “for your pain.”

Percy gasped as the ichor Apollo was forcefully circulating through his body reached the demigod’s heart. But aside from that one involuntary reaction, he held still.

The only way to prevent further damage, after all, was to prevent the ichor from remaining stagnant for any amount of time – except Percy had messed up.

“This feels like the time I had a heart attack, you know,” Percy panted, wondering if he was trying to distract himself from the unsettling sensation, or Apollo from focusing so intently on Percy's damaged body.

“That is not reassuring, in case you considered this a comfortable conversation opener,” Apollo said flatly.

Percy chuckled breathily. “It is comforting,” he corrected. “I lived through it.”

“Did you not live through many otherwise fatal incidents by virtue of being a zombie?” Apollo shot back acerbically.

Percy chose to ignore that, much more invested in analysing the singularly strange event. “It was very strange actually,” he mused. “After that, Kronos restricted himself to attacking only when the end was at hand, like when I was literally on the verge of pulling him out.”

Apollo was unwillingly drawn in. “Had you not perhaps made a dangerous resolution at that point?” he asked reluctantly. “Maybe Kronos was accustomed to your ability to enact otherwise terrible plans with great success and feared a repeat?”

Percy pouted, spirits rising as he steadily got used to the crawling of his own blood by someone else's design. “All I'd demonstrated by then was gullibility and a tendency to get murdered in increasingly outlandish ways. I don't see how simply talking to you was in any way threatening. Especially since the only other times he reacted was when you were literally carving me open or the Styx was destroying my body.”

Apollo made no sudden movements, certainly nothing as incriminating as stiffening.

Yet, there was something about his mien that convinced Percy that there was something untoward.

Percy couldn't help recalling something an Apollon had once told him.

“You're mortal. It's silly to believe you actually know what you're talking about.”

Or well, something along those lines.

“What did you do?” Percy asked suspiciously.

“Began the circulation of your ichor?” Apollo queried as he drew back, pretending complete ignorance about anything Percy might be alluding to.

“No,” Percy drawled. “I mean, what did you do back then? Why is it that I just happened to suffer a death that was completely out of the modus operandi of any of my adversaries at the moment?”

“Have you considered,” Apollo rebutted, “that what you call going against the modus operandi is merely your lack of sufficient knowledge as to someone's behaviour?”

“I think I know Kronos a little better than you at the moment,” Percy retorted flatly.

“What are you insinuating?” Apollo cried out, looking hurt at even the implication that Pretty might be doubting him.

“Nothing,” Percy replied. “I'm just trying to figure things out.”

And Percy meant it. It really did not matter so much what any version of Apollon, especially one who neither knew him nor had any fondness for him, had done.

Apollo was the one who'd accepted Percy, Percy's situation in the past, and Percy's name for him.

Hence, it was Apollo whom Percy cared about.

Apollo’s eyebrows twitched in uncertainty. “Your thoughts are running along a very strange wavelength.”

Percy snorted. “Strange? Have you decided to not listen to my thoughts anymore? You wouldn’t be commenting on their strangeness if you knew their content.”

Apollo clenched and unclenched his hands spasmodically. “I didn’t do anything,” he insisted apprehensively.

Percy tilted his head back and just took in a deep breath, letting the scents and sounds from his surroundings drift inside. The demigod would never claim to be the biggest lover of nature, but he couldn't deny that there was something about being in this park with Apollo that brightened up the whole abysmal day.

Perhaps Grover was right every time he asserted that there was nothing like being surrounded by green, growing things to make one feel better.

Or perhaps, Percy thought, it wasn't the smell of drying grass or the lack of people strolling inside the park that drew Percy in. Perhaps, it was the human presence indelibly imprinted here, the presence obvious in its absence, that was so attractive.

They weren't hidden in some location far away from reality.

Dust and the faintly metallic tang from the construction equipment only heightened the sense of being immersed in high-definition reality. The dug-out earth, the smell of exhaust wafting in from the street, the faint screams that Percy could hear if he just strained his senses a little – all of it was proof that this was Percy's world.

Apollo was sitting here with Percy.

Not Icarus.

This was twenty-first century New York, not Kamikos in the first millennium BCE.

“How can you be so blasé about the fact that I might have killed you!” Apollo burst out.

Percy couldn’t help it – he started laughing. “You’ve already killed me so many times – you think one more makes that much of a difference?”

“It’s not funny!” Apollo shouted.

Percy’s mirth abruptly disappeared. “No, it’s not,” he agreed solemnly. “But if I don’t laugh, what should I do? Malinger from maudlin self-pity?”

“But …” Apollo broke off. The god sniffed, rubbed a hand over his face, and then tried again. “Percy, what’s happened to you? You used to be so – determined. You were willing to brave any danger just to live. Where has that gone?”

Percy frowned. “I wasn’t aware you had spent that much time peeking in on me. And even if you have, I don’t think I’ve changed. I was only twelve when the sole thing that kept me from staying in the Underworld forever was my mother being unhappy about it.”

Apollo threw up his hands. “You approached a god in the middle of the Underworld simply because he carried a piece of your soul! In Asphodel and you turned around, tracked me down, and tried to literally claw your soul out of me. And now you say you were willing to stay down there forever?”

His voice cracked in the middle, a hint of the suppressed sobs leaking through.

Percy felt cold. “I didn’t do that,” he stated flatly. “Experience is what makes a person – and whatever interactions Icarus might have had with you, whatever person life might have made him – it was all washed clean by the Lethe. I might be the same soul–”

The heartbreak in Apollo’s eyes made his next words hard to voice, but Percy pushed through. He was tired of people looking at him and seeing someone other than Percy Jackson.

“–but I am not Icarus.”

Apollo studied Percy for a few long minutes, before saying hollowly, “I suppose you’re not.”  

“So,” Percy commented casually, eager to change the subject. “What did you guys do to upset Gaea? Because she’s stirring – and looking to stir you in a pot full of your own ichor unless I’m mistaken.”

Chapter Text

In classic godly behaviour, Apollo refused to answer. He even went so far as to vanish, looking as if he was the one who’d been unjustly attacked.

As he trudged through the broken streets of the meatpacking district, Percy couldn’t help thinking that Apollo would have been more comfortable with accusations than mellow understanding.

But he couldn’t let the fear of hurting Apollo’s feelings hinder him from revealing the truth, Percy tried to tell himself. The thought, however, rang hollow. Had he not been so overset from the sudden shift in his powers, combined as it was with the perplexing vision, Percy would have held his tongue.

Percy would have looked past every hint that Apollo considered him the culmination of both Percy and Icarus, would have pushed down the inadvertent hurt it caused, would have pretended to ignore everything wrong with this situation because Percy cared.

It would just have been more palatable had Apollo shown an iota of caring back.

Percy kicked at a broken piece of concrete in frustration. With a dull sense of shock, he watched the heavy slab on par with Mrs O’Leary in size become airborne and soar over the destroyed street for a few metres.

“Good throw,” George enthused, chattier now that he’d slept off his fright and exhaustion. “Now, what do you say about some rats?”

Percy stared at the snakes twined together along the length of the staff he was lugging around before sighing. “You’re right,” he agreed. “Food is clearly the number one priority. Everything else can wait.”

Shifting his hold on the cloth wrapped handle of the caduceus, Percy turned around and made his way towards the subway. For lack of any other pre-arranged destination, the park containing his abandoned picnic was as good a meeting place as anywhere else. If nothing else, at least there would still be some food to gorge upon.

Because Percy was hungry.

***

“So,” Hermes began before pausing leadingly.

Percy ignored the cue and just continued stuffing his face on burgers. Say what you would about fast-food chains, but Burger King knew what they were doing.

“Are you planning to become a champion eater?” Hermes finished feebly.

Percy looked at him askance, certain that was not what the god had intended to ask.

Hermes tried again, looking ill at ease inside the mortal establishment. Percy didn’t know why – it wasn’t as if the god had never eaten here before. Though perhaps it was the company and not the plastic tables and smell of fried food that filled the god with an urge to escape.

“Martha told me you posed a … sensitive question.”

“Which one?” Percy mumbled through a full mouth, too ravenous for manners. While he could certainly guess as to the question, stringing the god along was better for his wallet. Gaea had already netted Percy a trip to Burger King on Hermes’s dime, after all.

Hermes didn’t appear unaware of that fact. “That’s your fifth whopper,” he announced in the tones of someone watching a train wreck.

“I’m hungry, okay?” Percy snapped.

Why couldn’t more gods be like Apollo and imitate his unquestioning, non-judgemental, abetting behaviour? Apollo brought him food instead of a bouquet of dead plant bodies (or his car keys, which would have made a more appealing gift but probably not appropriate for a daily greeting).

Not to say Poseidon didn’t try – but their infrequent, weekly meetings were not improved by an offering of seaweed or live fish. Being a demigod, live creatures were not exactly enticing to Percy’s palate.

Hermes clearly decided to let it go. “Alright,” he said patiently. “But what was this about the Earth Goddess?”

Percy snorted. “Like you don’t know. Like the break you’re all going on isn’t an excuse to run away from even the possibility of a battle.”

Hermes’s eye twitched. “Percy, take this as advice from a concerned relative if not a god, but if you continue with your insolent commentary, someone is going to smite you. Perhaps even me.”

Percy chewed on a French fry as he contemplated the potential scenario. “Would that even be possible?” he asked curiously. “Can you still smite me?”

Hermes frowned. “Needless to say, that is not something you should be so eager to find out. And to answer your previous question, it is not a matter of running away but making a strategic retreat to recoup our strength.”

Percy widened his eyes in fake surprise.

“We have just fought Typhoon,” Hermes snapped pertly. “It took abandoning both Olympus and Atlantis for us to suppress him – and he is nothing compared to the might of the Earth Goddess. The last time she was active, it took Dionysus and Heracles himself along with all the Olympians to defeat her. And even then, we only won because she chose to sleep instead of continuing to war.”

“They’re still here,” Percy pointed out.

“But are demigods on their stature still here?” Hermes countered. “It takes a god and demigod working together to defeat a giant – and while there might be some willing to help you, you’re neither demigod nor god right now.”

Percy scowled, irritated at yet another attempt to get him to change his mind. “Annabeth, Thalia, Nico – and they’re just the strongest demigods aside from me. Do you mean to tell me there’s not a single god willing to assist them? Not even Hades, whom Nico convinced to fight Kronos himself? Not even Athena, who by your own testimony, badgered Zeus until we received some guidance if not literal immortal help?”

Hermes opened his mouth to reply but Percy shook his head. “No,” he decided. “You’re lying. One of the first things Apollo said was that the gods wouldn’t be around much longer. And he didn’t imply it was a general consensus.”

Hermes pursed his lips. “Alright, so in an effort to delay the beginning of the next Great prophecy, father has decided that we gods need to distance ourselves from mortal affairs. He hopes that if the Earth Goddess begins stirring, she’ll misconstrue our absence as our disappearance – and return to sleep.”

Percy stopped in the process of shovelling even more food inside his mouth. “Are you kidding me?” he asked incredulously. “If I were her, I’d take the abandonment as an excuse to fully wake up and take over the world – and I’m not even the megalomanic sort!”

“It’s not up to us,” Hermes deadpanned.

Percy blew out a frustrated breath. “So, when are you guys going on your immortal retreat?”  

Hermes shrugged. “If this theft of my caduceus was truly orchestrated by one of her minions, sooner rather than later.”

“But that suited guy already knows you’re still around – and Gaea wants all of you to hide,” Percy protested, fruitlessly trying to convince the god. “Can’t you see? If you’re all locked up on Olympus, that leaves Earth free for her taking!”

“It’s not up to us,” Hermes repeated, a hint of annoyance leaking through. “And if you had such an interest in godly politics, perhaps you should have chosen to become a god instead of making a wish wholly dependent on a person’s goodwill to enact.”

Percy slammed his mouth shut. He wanted to yell, he wanted to curse at Zeus, he wanted to send Medusa’s head to the god in an express package. But if there was one thing the demigod had learnt from his experience with getting killed at the drop of an immortal hat, it was temperance.

Badmouthing Zeus would do no good at the moment.

“Fine,” he spat out resentfully.

Instead of overt disobedience, he had to employ subtle subterfuge. The next time Poseidon decided to answer his call (which was as infrequent an occurrence as a blue moon given how often Percy prayed), Percy would attempt to talk his father into being open to intervention in earthly matters. The god lived on the ocean bed – how was Zeus supposed to know if the Sea God happened to send a hurricane or an especially localised earthquake, or even just an opportune wave?

Hermes seemed to read his mind. “And don’t expect any help from your father,” he warned. “In fact, you’re unlikely to receive help from any god other than Apollo and Aphrodite – and father knows that. They’ll be the ones under the closest watch.”

Percy flushed at this matter of fact mention of Apollo being willing to flout Zeus’s laws for him. Then the second name registered, bringing his elation to a swift, painful stop.

“Why Aphrodite?” he asked apprehensively. He would never forget the goddess’s interest in his love life – or her investment in ensuring it was as interesting as possible.

But Hermes merely shook his head. “I’ve already said too much. Just be aware – there are very few recourses open to you if you wish to make it past this winter. And the longer you wait, the more paths will be closed to you.”

Percy looked at the table full of demolished food cartons, and grimaced. “I know.”

***

Naturally, just as godly first instinct was denial and disappearance, Percy’s was revealing all to Annabeth.

About Gaea and the giants, not his own swiftly approaching end date.

Percy was brave, not foolish.

She squeezed her eyes shut, looking done with everything. Drafting paper, miniature models of what looked like porta-potties, and dozens of books littered the table Annabeth had claimed as her own inside the Arts and Crafts room.

Percy regretted interrupting what was supposed to be the height of her career, but this was crucial.

“I’ll start planning,” Annabeth finally said. “Maybe create some floating bunkers in case Earth itself turns against us. But Hermes was right. There’s not much we can do without godly assistance against the giants. And if none are willing to help, then I don’t know what we can do.”

“Ah, but he did say,” Percy began only for Annabeth to snap, “That your boyfriend or the Love goddess might agree.”

Percy winced.

Riiiight.

He knew he’d forgotten to omit something.

“I’m not certain we’re boyfriends at this point,” Percy refuted uncomfortably.

Conversely, that just made Annabeth flare up even more. “So what? You prove to be less of a perfect hero than he expected, so he dumped you?”

She looked ready to stab the god on Percy’s behalf.

“Hey,” Percy said softly. “That’s not what’s going on, okay? I know I haven’t told you everything, but there’s more between us than just idolisation of the Saviour of Olympus.”

Annabeth glared at him, as always taking refuge in anger rather than admitting her feelings. Feelings even Percy didn’t know how to interpret.

“Unless he’s planning to have a long-term, long-distance relationship with you, you’re going to break up soon,” she said stiffly. “Because I don’t think any of them are the sort to remain faithful to someone for longer than a week if they can’t even meet them. Let alone however long Olympus will be locked up.”

Percy pursed his lips, struggling to bite back the cutting words that wanted to fly out. He knew that Annabeth was bitter that a god had slunk into the vacancy created by her grand gesture. But he wished she wouldn’t take it out on the relationship he was trying to build with Apollo.

Not when Percy was consumed with doubts himself.   

“Just,” he pleaded, “can we focus on the Earth Goddess and the latest crisis, and not my non-existent love life?”

“If our chances of receiving any godly help depends on that very same love life,” she retorted, “I think it’s pretty important.”

That brought Percy up short. “What?”

“Your boyfriend and the Love Goddess might be the only ones willing to help,” she gritted out. “What do you think it means?”

“But you’re not wrong,” he protested. “We literally just had an argument. I’m not even certain he’s not going to avoid me for the next century, forget showing up to fight against a giant.”

“Convince him otherwise,” was Annabeth’s uncompromising reply. “If both our parents have already agreed to Zeus’s edict, they’re unlikely to break it in the first few years.”

Which would leave them in a very fine pickle indeed if Gaea rose anytime within this decade.

Percy rubbed his forehead in exasperation. Was it really his turn to seduce Apollo now?

Despite how hard he tried, though, annoyance failed to find any traction in the face of the growing anticipation.

The pain, the insult, the humiliation – it had constantly warred against longing and desire. Against a nostalgia for things that he’d been all too eager to abandon at the time.

Except now, Annabeth was telling him that giving up would be the worst thing for the world. That persevering in the face of this implicit rejection, fighting against his own shade, was the correct decision. The problem he’d been mulling over in the depths of his subconscious for about a month, finally had a concrete solution.

Percy was going to convince Apollo into seeing the person he was and not the dead boy he used to be. And if the god had any problems with that plan, Apollo could just choke on it.   

***

Percy tossed and turned, dimly conscious of the growing burn in his right arm. It was akin to the pins and needles that assaulted a limb that had fallen asleep – except worse. A thousand times worse.

Just before the sensation managed to jolt him fully into the realm of wakefulness, however, a cold hand gripped his. The fingers intertwining with his swollen digits sent a soothing rush down his arm.

Percy made a wordless, incomprehensible sound.

Someone gently carded their fingers through his hair. “Go to sleep.”

The whisper resonating familiarly through his subconscious was all that he required to fall back into the arms of Morpheus.

He dreamed of a line – chalk on craggy ground, shaky, fading in and out of existence.

Percy stepped across it.

His heart throbbed.

Percy stepped back.

His heart throbbed.

Percy raised his foot, hovered over the line, and stepped forward again. The sole of his shoe brushed against the crumbly streak and rubbed off a bit of the line.

White gleamed with the memory of the bones it had once formed.

Percy’s lungs struggled to draw in breath.

He stepped back and relief instantly swept over him.

Percy raised a trembling hand and wiped it across his clammy forehead. It was just a step. Just a line on the ground he’d crossed.

It was nothing.

Determined to prove himself correct, Percy stepped forward again, and then back.

Again, and again and again.

Out of a corner of his eye, he noted the way the line just grew fainter as if his very presence was wiping it from existence.

Percy.

Startled, the demigod looked around, certain he’d find the owner of that heart-crushingly melodious voice at his shoulder.

Red. Violet.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

His heart pounded with an odd echo, as if all the blood vessels in his body had been doubled and tripled and quadrupled without his awareness.

Percy.

Percy looked back at the line only to discover it had been replaced by gigantic doors made of Stygian Iron.

Except not, because the fires of Stygian Iron had been quenched within the River Styx. Stygian Iron didn’t do anything as plebeian as rust.

With the logic of dreams, Percy reached out and attempted to rub the red stains off the intricately carved doors.

A sliver of the door broke off into his hand.

His heart pounded.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

A golden eye gleamed from behind the crack.

Percy.

The eye curved in malicious gratitude.

Percy!

Percy woke up to Thanatos’s scream ringing through his ears, his heart pounding in rhythm to the rivers of the Underworld.

Percy looked up at the blue of the sky, the blue of life, the blue of Apollo’s eyes, and fell back asleep.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

Chapter Text

Fingers danced across Percy’s forehead.

He frowned.

Calloused finger pads tap-danced delicately across his clammy skin. It tickled.

Percy huffed, involuntarily drawn out of the heat haze that had descended upon him sometime during his sleep.

He hated it.

He hated the daylight sneaking past the window curtains to stab his eyes, hated the lack of air conditioning, hated the horns blaring on the street.

Whining, he buried his face into the thigh next to him.

The hand paused in its ministrations, making Percy push the back of his head into the frozen fingers. His brain felt muddled, but certainly, if the person taking liberties with his body could poke him in the forehead, they could stroke his head?

The person took the suggestion and ran their hand through his hair, adding a hint of nail as they scratched Percy’s scalp.

Percy sighed in satisfaction and hugged the leg with both arms and legs, preparing to go back to sleep.

As if from far away, his mother asked, “Is he waking up?”

“Not yet,” Apollo answered.

There was a long silence before Sally said, “Here. The cake from that recipe. Are you certain that,” she trailed off.

“There’s no certainty in this,” Apollo answered ponderously. “But I do believe he will wake up soon.”

Percy’s mother heaved a sigh. “I wish he hadn’t inherited my stubbornness,” she lamented.

Apollo chuckled. “His stubbornness is one of Percy’s most maddening yet essential traits.” Then, in a sombre tone, “I fear I wouldn’t recognise him without it.”

Percy slipped back into the grip of Morpheus, which was a terrifying prospect only barely made tolerable by the presence of his mother and boyfriend.

The next time Percy regained consciousness, he remained awake. This time, he knew, it was true wakefulness and not an ebbing tide barely touching the high tide mark on the shore.

He opened his eyes.

“Good evening,” Apollo greeted humorously. “Any longer and you would have given Sleeping Beauty a run for her money.”

“Did you try kissing me? That might have worked,” Percy riposted hoarsely.

“That was only in the Disney tale,” Apollo replied wryly. “I assure you, you would not be so comfortable with how the sleep was broken originally.”

Looking at that perfect face, still here even though conflicted, Percy asked, “Does it matter? It’s the version I know now.”

Apollo’s lips twitched into a sad smile. “I suppose not,” he whispered.

The god took in a deep breath and quite visibly decided to change the tone and topic of conversation. “Tell me, are you more hungry or thirsty?”

“Bathroom, actually,” Percy answered.

Apollo chuckled involuntarily. He shook his head. “Should have expected that.”

‘Why didn’t you?’ Percy thought miserably but didn’t voice it.

A trip to the bathroom to take care of his ablutions was just what Percy needed to be rid of his maudlin mood. Nothing quite compared to a rush of pressurised water to the face to blast him into awareness.

Percy ran a hand through his face, letting the water wash away the sweat as he thought.

He’d seen something. Something … disturbing?

He didn’t know. Couldn’t remember, to be more precise.

Something about a jumping rope perhaps? A long, constantly swaying line trying to entangle him that he had to jump over. Except, every time he jumped, the arms swinging the rope tired and …

Percy.

Percy wrenched the shower head free of its holder and threw it at the voice.

He had had quite enough of all-seeing gods entertaining themselves to the show known as his life, thank you very much.

The metal cylinder cracked tile, crumbled cement, and embedded itself into the brick of the bathroom wall.

Percy flushed, embarrassment creeping in as the absence of any person, otherworldly or otherwise, registered. Still, not completely convinced yet, Percy tugged the shower head free from the wall and doused the entire bathroom with a faint spray of water.

Nothing. No strange area that reflected water like a mirror did light. No void in the middle drinking in water like a portal to a desert. No muffled yelp as an unseen voyeur responded to the sudden attack.

Percy tapped his foot against the floor as he went through the last few seconds. That voice … it had existed, yes? Someone had taken his name. Someone had heard his thoughts, someone had seen his mind venturing into forbidden territory, and …

Responded?

With an idle sweep of his hand, the bent edge of the shower head straightened, crumbled cement flew back into the hole in the wall, and the shattered tile on the floor reassembled into a water-speckled clay diamond.       

It hadn’t been a demigod dream. A nightmare couched in metaphor perhaps, but nothing resembling the future made real that used to reign over his mind.

Gaea, a line, the gods going on involuntary vacation, and now the bone deep certainty that he would never again have a demigod dream.

Percy blew out a breath.

His stomach cramped. Sent out feelers for nourishment.

Failed to discover anything but bile and Percy’s own body.

Shuddering at the sharp stab of pain, Percy hurriedly threw on a pair of shorts and ran into his bedroom. His mom had mentioned cake, hadn’t she? He might have drifted in and out of sleep, and perhaps even moments of lucidity had been marred by holdovers from his dreaming, but one thing Percy could never mistake was the smell of his mother’s cooking.

He brightened up as he saw the cake on the table. Still within its baking tray and covered with a plate that blinked in and out view, but indisputably his mother’s creation. Percy grabbed a slice and shoved it into his mouth.

It was only once he’d ravenously devoured about a third of it that the taste registered. “Is this ambrosia?” he asked incredulously. How else could stale vanilla cake taste like chocolate cookies?

“No,” Apollo answered from behind. “Just mortal cake – with ambrosia crumbled throughout.”

Percy froze before slowly turning around. He hadn’t noticed the god’s arrival. And yet, Apollo had seen him off to the bathroom, hadn’t he? Why wouldn’t he be still reclining on the bed, peering at him questioningly?

Percy gulped, hand petrified halfway to his mouth – a morsel of cake barely gripped in a lax hand.

Awareness of the water trickling down his torso to dampen the already thin fabric of his shorts hammered away at his psyche.  

Apollo sighed. “Did you forget? Your digestive tract is no longer purely mortal. You cannot get all you need from mortal food anymore – not unless you wish to be fed intravenously. There is simply not enough surface area for sufficient digestion.”

Percy swallowed, the cake in his stomach suddenly heavy as lead. All apprehensions about maintaining his dignity flew out of the window.

“How long have I been asleep?” he asked, trepidation swirling in his gut in a pale parody of the way his internal organs now shifted with every breath, barely held inside by the casing of mortal skin.

Apollo shrugged. “A week, or so.”

“I need to see Mom,” Percy blurted out, unwilling to dwell on that pronouncement.

“Go ahead,” Apollo nodded politely. “But afterwards, I hope you’ll agree to go somewhere with me.”

“Where?” Percy asked, yet another stone landing with an acid-reflux causing splash in his stomach.

“Redwood.”

“What?”

A quicksilver, gossamer smile. “Never mind.”

Percy gulped, before hurrying outside to prove his continued state of liveliness to his mother. Despite his earlier resolution, whenever he came face to face with Apollo – it grew practically impossible to plot anything not utterly heart-breaking.

*** 

“This is nice,” Percy sighed, breathing in the muggy air.

Indeed, surrounded by giants of the natural kind, whose only objective in life was to grow and help maintain the ecosystem, was a special kind of relief.

He felt practically infinitesimal in comparison to the towering redwoods in the Californian national park.

Percy turned towards his companion only to be catch Apollo’s inscrutable smile. Self-consciously, Percy stood up straighter. “What is it?”

“Just thinking,” Apollo answered before taking a couple of steps forward and taking Percy’s hand.

Percy eyed the hand gripping his consideringly. Despite the seeming confidence of the action, Apollo’s hand trembled minutely, his jaw twitched spasmodically, and he kept directing cautious glances Percy’s way.

Percy tightened his grip, not quite able to believe that the god had come back after the words Percy had spoken. What happened to the guy who’d curse people for the pettiest of all reasons? 

Then again, Percy reasoned as they meandered among the trees, it wasn’t as if Percy had offered a rejection or been any more disrespectful than to be expected from him. He’d simply expressed a desire for Apollo to date Percy and not a figment of his past.

Or perhaps, considering the plethora of plants that existed solely because of a god’s intervention, Apollo had brought him here to plant a new tree called Perseus.

Percy swallowed and spread his senses deep into the ground, hoping fruitlessly to reach the same level of synchronicity with his immortal half that had triggered an impromptu earthquake once.

Not that he expected anything, Percy assured himself. It was just slightly concerning when he only had the one life left to live. Well, unless he took the option everyone seemed intent on shoving down his throat and actively turned immortal. It wouldn’t even be that hard.

Apollo’s feet slowed and then stopped altogether, bringing Percy to a reluctant halt. 

Percy looked at him from the corner of his eye, wondering what the god would do, what Apollo’s intentions for bringing him here were. Because he had the terrible feeling that if Apollo promised to truly try, it would be the last straw.

If one more person were to broach the topic of immortality, Percy might just give in. He’d agree to help his friends against Gaea, he’d agree to guide new demigods through all the dangers that beset them – and he’d agree to spend however long with Apollo the god was willing to grant him.

Percy was scared of what he’d agree to.

Because he’d also be agreeing to watch all his friends except for Thalia die, he’d be agreeing to bury his mother without even the hope of seeing her again in Elysium, he’d be agreeing to live with loss for eons – and perhaps transform into the same caricature of humanity all the gods were.

Percy was terrified of his own teetering resolutions.

Apollo stepped closer before hesitating. A pink tongue flashed out and licked a perfectly moisturised lower lip before Apollo said abruptly, “Do you see that tree?”

Percy pushed down his worries and pretended to look around. “Which one?” he teased. “There are just so many.”

“The one right in front of you,” Apollo deadpanned.

Percy grinned before turning to take in the craggy bark of the towering redwood. The top of the tree disappeared into the midst of the leafy canopy, impossible to distinguish even with his neck craned back all the way.

“Yeah,” he marvelled, awe at the majesty of the giant before him settling deep into his bones.

“It’s Icarus,” Apollo said. “After you.”

Percy's breath caught in his throat. When he finally felt able to breathe past the constriction, he whispered, “I told you. Icarus is just a piece of your memory now. He might as well have not existed for all the evidence of his presence you’ll find inside me.”

Apollo fidgeted. “I’m not trying to hurt you,” he finally responded, hoarse, “but I am the God of Truth. Do not lie to me and expect me to believe you.”

Percy gazed at the tree he shared a namesake with, taking in the whorls and lines decorating its bark.

“You were a memory,” Apollo insisted. “And so, I immortalised you. In tales and songs and paintings …”

“He might … linger inside me,” Percy gritted out.

Linger inside in dreams and fears brought to life every single time Percy closed his eyes. Linger as an invisible presence every time Percy tried to tell Daedalus something or woke up in the morning to train Ailea.

“But I'm not Icarus,” Percy finished softly.

“No,” Apollo agreed, something exhausted and resigned in his voice.

“Then why?” Percy demanded in frustration. “You knew – you experienced my memories. You, of all people, should have never mistaken me for Icarus. Icarus might have been my past, might have been the doorway through which Kronos entangled our fates together, but I’m the one you met! Then why?”

He closed his mouth. Percy hadn’t … meant to confess anything of the sort. Hadn’t meant to refer to the turmoil swirling inside him. Hadn’t meant to voice the confused pain at this clear rejection of the person he was.

Why did Apollo persist on clinging to the shade whose first instinct was to attack him? Why did the broken, bleeding creature dismantling at the edges matter more than Percy’s very real, alive being?

Percy was the one Apollo had confessed to loving. In a time disappeared from all but memory, Percy was the one Apollo had fallen for. So why did the god seek the soul left behind in the past?   

Apollo couldn’t look at Percy. Eyes fixed unseeingly on the reddish soil, he whispered, “I fell in love with Percy, but it was Icarus who I could have kept. Icarus who I built all my dreams around. Because if I loved Percy … then the person I loved was already dead.”

The breath caught in Percy’s throat, but he couldn’t let it stop him. Couldn’t let Apollo’s words make a lie of their reality.

He sucked in air that stabbed at his lungs like the spindly arms of a tree and croaked out, “But I’m here now.”

I’m here now.

Apollo shrugged, that indecipherable expression still on his face. Misery shrouded his shoulders, but what good was that when the god couldn’t even look at Percy?

“The mind’s a powerful thing,” Apollo said vaguely. “It can make truth of even the most outlandish desire.”

“Why did you bring me here then?”

Were there birds in the canopy? Insects buzzing in the rhododendron bush to the side? because Percy couldn’t hear anything but the silence emanating from the motionless figure of the god in front of him.

“Because it took me a long time.” The words tumbled off Apollo’s lips like a revelation never meant to escape the clutches of a miserly hoarder.

A long time to do what?

Apollo shuddered. When he looked up, uncertainty shimmered in blue eyes so vulnerable Percy wished to shade them with his own hands if necessary.

“To reconcile the person I’d convinced myself you were and the person you considered yourself to be.”

“What does that mean?” Percy whispered.

“You’re not. He wasn’t,” Apollo struggled to articulate. “There’s a shared kernel of courage and sheer goodness inside both of you. You’d persevere in the face of all obstacles, fight off even the whole of reality to accomplish your goals. But just because your beings have danced intertwined, just because you’ve shifted in and out of each other’s lives, just because you’ve experienced moments in each other’s life – doesn’t mean you’re the same people.”   

“Then?” Percy asked, morbidly curious to know more even though it made his heart clench painfully.

Apollo ran a hand through his head, tousling already dishevelled locks. “I liked both, alright? I fell for you but it was Icarus I spent centuries healing, centuries making whole no matter how much he fought. Icarus the one I made deals with Persephone for.”

Percy swallowed. Was this … was Apollo breaking up with him?

Apollo’s chest heaved with the force of his outburst. “But Icarus is gone. Icarus was never Percy. I was always in love with two separate people, not just memories concealed within a single soul.”

Not … entirely the truth. Loathe as he was to interrupt Apollo’s strange, meandering, attempt to confess … what exactly? … Percy couldn’t deny that by virtue of reincarnation, Icarus really was memories buried inside Percy’s soul.

But he couldn’t voice it. Couldn’t say a single thing.

I was always in love with two separate people.

I was always in love with two separate people.

Icarus had spent centuries carving himself into Apollo’s heart.

While Percy had spent millennia being forgotten.

“I wanted both,” Apollo divulged with a heavy exhalation. “You and him, both. In the same person. But I know now. You’re not him.”  

Percy stared at the god, unable to move a single cell in his body. One day, some intrepid explorer in search of Icarus the tree would stumble into this grove and discover the petrified statue of a demigod and solve the missing persons case of Percy Jackson.

Because Percy couldn’t move.

I wanted both.

Please, please, please, Percy pled, to which god or even the Universe at large, he didn’t know.

The shape of the wonderful, awful, thing Apollo was crafting through his awkward, twisting oratory wouldn’t relax its hold on Percy’s entire being.

A tentative smile lit up the god's face at Percy’s continued attention, even though Percy considered it entirely too soon give the fraught nature of the conversation.

“Icarus is a memory,” Apollo said before motioning towards the tree they stood in front of. “And this is a living mural commemorating him.”

Percy stared, transfixed. The whole world seemed to hold its breath, the grove transforming into a sacred place standing witness to the fruition of Percy’s secret pleas. 

“Icarus is a merely a memory in a mural,” Apollo whispered. “Percy Jackson is a living being in front of me.”

Something hot and tense inside Percy cooled down, unravelled. Percy focused on the god, taking in the vulnerable cast to his features, the pleading eyes, the trembling lip.

Oh.

Icarus was a living memory … but Percy was whom Apollo wished to create new memories with.

Heart soaring, head floating, Percy leaned forward. Apollo’s eyes widening was the last thing Percy saw before his lids dropped shut and their lips met.

Kissing Apollo was one thing that Percy refused to relegate to the realm of memory.